Journal Article

The Knowledge Connector decision support system for multiomics-based precision oncology

Ückert, Frank, Kerle, Irina A., Baude-Müller, Annika, Hübschmann, Daniel, Horak, Peter, Schoop, Janine, Oeser, Lena, Glimm, Hanno, Hutter, Barbara, Hausmann, Steffen, Hüllein, Jennifer, Lipka, Daniel B., Fröhling, Stefan, Glocker, Katrin, Teleanu, Maria-Veronica, Heining, Christoph, Heilig, Christoph E., Beck, Katja, Knurr, Alexander, Uhrig, Sebastian, Kreutzfeldt, Simon, Koch, Christian, Fröhlich, Martina, Roth, Benjamin

2026

Overview

Precision cancer medicine aims to improve patient outcomes by providing individually tailored recommendations for clinical management based on the evaluation of biological disease profiles in multidisciplinary molecular tumor boards (MTBs). The quality of MTB decisions depends on the comprehensive, reliable, and reproducible interpretation of increasingly complex molecular data. We developed and implemented, as part of a multicenter precision oncology program, the Knowledge Connector (KC), a decision support system that integrates individual patients’ molecular and clinical data with world knowledge to generate and document MTB recommendations. The KC supports data curation, database integration, and discussion based on multiomics data and provides an interface for creating a cross-institutional knowledge base. Furthermore, it extracts relevant biomarker-drug associations and increases the efficacy of data interpretation in a clinically relevant manner by reducing reliance on external sources and optimizing inter-curator concordance. Our results demonstrate that the KC is a versatile tool that supports medical decision-making in MTBs, thus enabling the scalability of precision cancer medicine. Integrating complex multi-omics data for individual patient decision making can be challenging. Here, the authors develop Knowledge Connector as a decision support system to generate and document Molecular Tumor Board recommendations and support medical decision-making.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group,Nature Portfolio
• Subject: 45/91 / 49/23 / 631/67/1059/602 / 692/308/53/2421 / 692/4028/67/1059/602 / 692/4028/67/1857 / 692/4028/67/69 / Biological analysis / Biomarkers / Biomarkers, Tumor - genetics / Cancer / Clinical decision making / Clinical trials / Data interpretation / Decision making / Decision support systems / Decision Support Systems, Clinical / DNA methylation / Documents / Genes / Humanities and Social Sciences / Humans / Knowledge / Knowledge Bases / Knowledge bases (artificial intelligence) / Medical Oncology - methods / Medical research / multidisciplinary / Multiomics / Mutation / Neoplasms - drug therapy / Neoplasms - genetics / Neoplasms - therapy / Oncology / Patients / Precision medicine / Precision Medicine - methods / Science / Science (multidisciplinary) / Tumors / Whole genome sequencing