PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Alexander L. R. Lubbock
AU  - Leonard A. Harris
AU  - Vito Quaranta
AU  - Darren R. Tyson
AU  - Carlos F. Lopez
TI  - Visualization and analysis of high-throughput <em>in vitro</em> dose–response datasets with Thunor
AID  - 10.1101/530329
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 530329
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/01/25/530329.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/01/25/530329.full
AB  - Quantifying the effects of drugs and other environmental factors on cell proliferation in vitro continues to be one of the most prevalent assays in biomedical research. Assessment of the dose-dependent nature of drug effects is typically performed with a variety of commercial software applications or using freely available, but more technically demanding, statistical programming environments such as Python or R. However, with the advent of large, publicly-available drug response databases and continued advancements in high-throughput experimentation, there is a growing need for user-friendly software platforms that can efficiently and reliably facilitate analysis within and across large datasets. Here we introduce Thunor, an open-source software platform for the management, analysis, and visualization of large-scale dose-dependent cell proliferation datasets. Thunor provides a simple, user-friendly interface to upload cell count data and a graphical plate map tool to annotate plate wells with cell lines and drugs. Best-fit dose–response curves are generated based on either cell viability or proliferation rate drug effect metrics. Derived dose–response parameters, such as IC50, Emax, and activity area, are automatically calculated by the software back-end. An arrayed plot interface supports multiple plot types, including time course, dose–response curve, box/bar/scatter plots of derived parameters, and quality control analyses, among others. We demonstrate the features of Thunor on large-scale, publicly-available viability data and an in-house, high-throughput proliferation rate dataset. Software, documentation, and an online demo are all available at thunor.net.