Simplifying the Analysis of Chimerism Data

SLU ID 19-006 | Rchimerism: An R-Package for Automated Chimerism Data Analysis

Background

A quantitative chimerism test monitors engraftment of donor hematopoietic stem cells or relapse of leukemias or lymphomas in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) patients. The most common method used for chimerism testing is PCR amplification of short tandem repeat loci followed by capillary gel electrophoresis. Manual data analysis is tedious and time consuming, as it involves the selection of informative loci and the repetition of quantifying chimerism percentage for multiple loci from multiple cell types. It is also susceptible to human errors. Currently, there is no open source software that fully automates chimerism data analysis.

Overview

Researchers at Saint Louis University have developed an R package (Rchimerism) that automatically picks informative loci, calculates chimerism percentage, and displays the results through a user-friendly interface. Tests of the program accuracy produced 100% concordance with manual calculation.

Benefits

The potential benefits of this technology include:

• Minimizing the time required to analyze chimerism data

• Minimizing the tediousness of analyzing chimerism data

• Minimizing errors in chimerism data analysis

Applications

Potential applications of this technology include chimerism data analysis.

Opportunity

Saint Louis University is seeking partners to further develop and commercialize this technology.