New software leads to greater insights into childhood tumour

reNEW’s Bioinformatics Hub, based at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI), has developed cutting-edged software that can now uncover how the most common heart tumour in children forms and changes.

The research, led by Denis Bienroth and Natalie Charitakis and in collaboration with the MCRI Heart Regeneration and Diseases labs, found the software, VR-Omics, can identify previously undetected cell activities of cardiac rhabdomyoma, a type of benign heart tumour. This work was published in Genome Biology.

Cardiac rhabdomyoma, a non-cancerous tumour of the heart muscle, is typically identified during pregnancy or early infancy and is often harmless. However, in some infants and young children, these tumours can enlarge and obstruct blood flow to critical organs, potentially leading to respiratory distress, arrhythmias, blockages, and even heart failure.

“When the tumours cause severe health complications, treatment options are limited and include surgically removing part of the heart, which may lead to further complications and death,” reNEW Bioinformatics Hub co-lead Professor Mirana Ramialison said.

“Unfortunately, it’s not well understood why these tumours form.”

VR-Omics is the first platform capable of analysing and visualising both 2D and 3D spatial data on standard desktop or in virtual reality environments. This cutting-edge technology is designed to explore the spatial genetic architecture of human tissue, offering deeper insights into specific diseases.

To put their new software to the test, Ramialison and her team analysed heart tissue from three Melbourne children diagnosed with cardiac rhabdomyoma. In a significant breakthrough, the study revealed specific tumour characteristics that had not been previously identified.

These findings could lead to new treatments for cardiac rhabdomyoma.

VR-Omics also supports research into a broad range of spatial transcriptomics data used to study multiple diseases within the  reNEW consortium, and aids the interpretation of our organoid research.

“VR-Omics easily allows to generate 3D interactive datasets from consecutive tissue slides of patients,” software developer Denis Bienroth said.

“This could allow for greater analysis of human tissue in their native structure compared to other methods.”

You can explore VR-Omics here, including instructions on how to download and other documentation: https://ramialison-lab.github.io/pages/vromics.html