Abstract 1195: BC-BET v2.0: Updates to an online Bladder Cancer Biomarker Evaluation tool

Abstract The Bladder Cancer Biomarker Evaluation Tool (BC-BET) is a web application for quickly evaluating candidate diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers in bladder cancer, based on publicly available gene expression datasets. Specifically, BC-BET evaluates whether a selected gene is differentially expressed between normal cells and tumor samples; between low- and high- grade tumors; and between non-muscle invasive and muscle-invasive tumors. BC-BET also evaluates whether a selected gene is significantly associated with survival, and whether the gene is associated with survival in two clinically important patient subsets: patients with low-grade, non-muscle invasive tumors; and patients with high-grade, muscle invasive tumors. Here we describe updates to BC-BET that include the inclusion of additional patient cohorts, and new features including multi-gene search, data visualization, additional data export options, and faster search times. BC-BET v2.0 contains gene expression data from 17 cohorts (N = 1846), and users can now query up to 500 genes at a time in order to quickly identify genes associated with bladder cancer. For single gene queries, dot plots can be generated for visualization of gene expression across groups; while Kaplan-Meier curves can be generated for survival analyses. BC-BET v2.0 also allows users to export the gene expression and clinical data, which would allow researchers to generate their own visualizations or to carry out additional analyses. Finally, the BC-BET backend was re-designed, resulting in more than a 2x fold increase in performance efficiency. We hope that this tool will continue to serve the bladder cancer research community and will ultimately lead to a better understanding of and treatment of this disease. The BC-BET web application as well as its source code is freely available from https://gdancik.github.io/BC-BET/. Citation Format: Garrett M. Dancik. BC-BET v2.0: Updates to an online Bladder Cancer Biomarker Evaluation tool [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022; 2022 Apr 8-13. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(12_Suppl):Abstract nr 1195.