A complete example: Oncology

We will now present a phenopacket that represents a case of an individual with bladder cancer. We present each of the sections of the Phenopacket in separate subsections for legibility. Recall that JSON data is represented as as name/value pairs that are separated by commas (we show the trailing comma on all but the last name/value pair of the Phenopacket).

Infiltrating urothelial carcinoma: A case report

We here present a case report about an individual with infiltrating urothelial carcinoma (NCIT:C39853). Three somatic variants were identified in this sample which are judged to be related to tumorigenesis. Additionally, a secondary finding of prostate carcinoma is made. The two distal ureter segments are found to be cancer-free. A pelvic lymph node is found to have a metastasis, but no molecular investigation was made. The patient was found to have two clinical abnormalities, hematuria (blood in the urine) and dysuria (painful urination).

In this example, we imagine that whole genome sequencing was performed on the infiltrating urothelial carcinoma as well as on the metastasis in the pelvic lymph node. A paired normal germline sample was also sequenced. All three files are located on some local file system, and this Phenopacket is used to organize the information about the diagnosis and phenotypes of the cancer in a way that would be able to support analysis of the WGS data. In a larger study, one such Phenopacket could organize the information for each of thousands of patients.

id

The id field is an arbitrary but required value.

id: "example case"

subject

The subject block is an Individual element. The id can be arbitrary identifiers (id is required).

subject:
  id: "patient1"
  dateOfBirth: "1964-03-15T00:00:00Z"
  sex: "MALE"

phenotypicFeatures

This field can be used to represent clinical manifestations using the phenotype element. Phenotypes directly related to the biopsied or extirpated tumor specimens should be reported in the Biosample element (see below). In this example, the patient is found to have Hematuria and severe Dysuria.

phenotypicFeatures:
   - type:
       id: "HP:0000790"
       label: "Hematuria"
   - type:
       id: "HP:0100518"
       label: "Dysuria"
     severity:
       id: "HP:0012828"
       label: "Severe"

biosamples

This is a list of Biosample elements that describe the evaluation of pathological examination of tumor specimens. We will present each Biosample in turn. The entire collection of biosamples is represented as follows.

biosamples: [  ... ,  ... , ....],

biosample 1: Infiltrating Urothelial Carcinoma

The first biosample is a biopsy taken from the wall of the urinary bladder. The histological diagnosis is represented by a National Cancer Institute’s Thesaurus code. This is a primary malignant neoplasm with stage T2bN2. A VCF file representing a paired normal germline sample is located at /data/genomes/urothelial_ca_wgs.vcf.gz on the file system. In order to specify the procedure used to remove the bladder and prostate gland, we use the NCIT term for Radical Cystoprostatectomy (defined as the simultaneous surgical resection of the urinary bladder and prostate gland with pelvic lymphadenectomy).

- id: "sample1"
  individualId: "patient1"
  sampledTissue:
    id: "UBERON_0001256"
    label: "wall of urinary bladder"
  timeOfCollection:
    age:
      iso8601duration: "P52Y2M"
  histologicalDiagnosis:
    id: "NCIT:C39853"
    label: "Infiltrating Urothelial Carcinoma"
  tumorProgression:
    id: "NCIT:C84509"
    label: "Primary Malignant Neoplasm"
  procedure:
    code:
      id: "NCIT:C5189"
      label: "Radical Cystoprostatectomy"
  files:
  - uri: "file:///data/genomes/urothelial_ca_wgs.vcf.gz"
    individualToFileIdentifiers:
      patient1: "NA12345"
    fileAttributes:
      genomeAssembly: "GRCh38"
      fileFormat: "vcf"
      description: "Urothelial carcinoma sample"
  materialSample:
    id: "EFO:0009655"
    label: "abnormal sample"

Biosample 2: Prostate Acinar Adenocarcinoma

Prostate adenocarcinoma was discovered as an incidental finding. The tumor was found to have a Gleason score of 7.

- id: "sample2"
  individualId: "patient1"
  sampledTissue:
    id: "UBERON:0002367"
    label: "prostate gland"
  timeOfCollection:
    age:
      iso8601duration: "P52Y2M"
  histologicalDiagnosis:
    id: "NCIT:C5596"
    label: "Prostate Acinar Adenocarcinoma"
  tumorProgression:
    id: "NCIT:C95606"
    label: "Second Primary Malignant Neoplasm"
  tumorGrade:
    id: "NCIT:C28091"
    label: "Gleason Score 7"
  procedure:
    code:
      id: "NCIT:C15189"
      label: "Biopsy"

Biosample 3: Left ureter

A biopsy of the left ureter reveal normal findings.

- id: "sample3"
  individualId: "patient1"
  sampledTissue:
    id: "UBERON:0001223"
    label: "left ureter"
  timeOfCollection:
    age:
      iso8601duration: "P52Y2M"
  histologicalDiagnosis:
    id: "NCIT:C38757"
    label: "Negative Finding"
  procedure:
    code:
      id: "NCIT:C15189"
      label: "Biopsy"

Biosample 4: Right ureter

A biopsy of the right ureter reveal normal findings.

- id: "sample4"
  individualId: "patient1"
  sampledTissue:
    id: "UBERON:0001222"
    label: "right ureter"
  timeOfCollection:
    age:
      iso8601duration: "P52Y2M"
  histologicalDiagnosis:
    id: "NCIT:C38757"
    label: "Negative Finding"

Biosample 4: Pelvic lymph node

A biopsy of a pelvic lymph node revealed a metastasis. A reference to a somatic genome sequence file is provided.

- id: "sample5"
 individualId: "patient1"
 sampledTissue:
   id: "UBERON:0015876"
   label: "pelvic lymph node"
 timeOfCollection:
   age:
     iso8601duration: "P52Y2M"
 tumorProgression:
   id: "NCIT:C3261"
   label: "Metastatic Neoplasm"
 procedure:
   code:
     id: "NCIT:C15189"
     label: "Biopsy"
 files:
 - uri: "file://data/genomes/metastasis_wgs.vcf.gz"
   individualToFileIdentifiers:
     sample5: "BS730275"
   fileAttributes:
     genomeAssembly: "GRCh38"
     fileFormat: "vcf"
     description: "lymph node metastasis sample"

genes and variants

These elements of the Phenopacket are empty. One could have used them to specify that a certain gene or variant was identified that was inferred to be related to the tumor specimen (for instance, a germline mutation in a cancer susceptibility gene).

diseases

We recommend using the National Cancer Institute’s Thesaurus codes to represent cancer diagnoses, but any relevant ontology term can be used. Information about tumor staging should be added here. See Disease for details.

diseases:
- term:
    id: "NCIT:C39853"
    label: "Infiltrating Urothelial Carcinoma"
  diseaseStage:
  - id: "NCIT:C27971"
    label: "Stage IV"
  clinicalTnmFinding:
  - id: "NCIT:C48766"
    label: "pT2b Stage Finding"
  - id: "NCIT:C48750"
    label: "pN2 Stage Finding"
  - id: "NCIT:C48700"
    label: "M1 Stage Finding"

htsFiles

This is a reference to the paired normal germline sample.

htsFiles:
- uri: "file://data/genomes/germline_wgs.vcf.gz"
  description: "Matched normal germline sample"
  htsFormat: "VCF"
  genomeAssembly: "GRCh38"
  individualToSampleIdentifiers:
    example case: "NA12345"

metaData

The MetaData is required to provide details about all of the ontologies and external references used in the Phenopacket.

metaData:
   created: "2021-05-11T15:07:16.662Z"
   createdBy: "Peter R"
   submittedBy: "Peter R"
   resources:
   - id: "hp"
     name: "human phenotype ontology"
     url: "http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/hp.owl"
     version: "2019-04-08"
     namespacePrefix: "HP"
     iriPrefix: "http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/HP_"
   - id: "uberon"
     name: "uber anatomy ontology"
     url: "http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/uberon.owl"
     version: "2019-03-08"
     namespacePrefix: "UBERON"
     iriPrefix: "http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/UBERON_"
   - id: "ncit"
     name: "NCI Thesaurus OBO Edition"
     url: "http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/ncit.owl"
     version: "18.05d"
     namespacePrefix: "NCIT"
   phenopacketSchemaVersion: "2.0"
   externalReferences:
   - id: "PMID:29221636"
     description: "Urothelial neoplasms in pediatric and young adult patients: A large\
       \ single-center series"

The Java code that was used to create this example is explained here.