ImmunoExplorer: A Web-Based Multivariate Visualization System for Exploratory Analysis of Immunotherapy

We present ImmunoExplorer, a web-based multivariate visualization environment that supports exploratory analysis of experimental datasets typical in immunotherapy research. Research advances in immuno-oncology have opened up new frontiers for experimental and clinical research that aims to understand the complex interactions between cancer and the immune systems. Immunotherapy focuses on the development of novel cancer therapies based on leveraging these interactions. Extensive analysis of experimental datasets is required to rigorously validate preclinical results and clinical outcomes to design new therapies and to identify who will benefit from them. Visualization is a crucial part of this analysis, given the complexity, multidimensionality, and heterogeneity of the data involved and the lack of automatic computational solutions to derive patterns. In this work we first characterize the data types and analysis tasks, and then present two visualization techniques for comparative studies of various therapies. Finally, we demonstrate the usefulness of the design through a case study using a real dataset.