# Simplifying the transformation of laboratory test data for integration into the ImmPort database

> **NIH NIH R03** · CINCINNATI CHILDRENS HOSP MED CTR · 2024 · $80,250

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
The sharing of data in biomedical research, including data generated from clinical trials, is paramount for
ensuring reproducibility, improving study design, increasing analytic power via concatenation of disparate data
sets, and identifying and testing new hypotheses. With more data being made publicly available, there is a critical
need to facilitate their re-use. The reusability of publicly available clinical trial datasets is more complex when
data are shared in an unstructured format, as compared to in a structured database, due to the need for arduous
manual annotation of individual files to permit secondary analyses. One platform to share individual participant
level clinical trial data is the Immunology Database and Analysis Portal (ImmPort), a NIH/NIAID-funded public
warehouse providing open access to clinical and mechanistic data from immunological and clinical studies.
The overall aim of this proposal is to enhance the reusability of clinical trial data shared through ImmPort and to
encourage their re-use. Specifically, the goal is to develop an automated tool to simplify the transformation of
laboratory test data from clinical trials into the format of the ImmPort submission template. Upload of the data in
this template format is necessary for integration into the structured database. Otherwise, the data will be made
available to the public as custom formatted study files, complicating their re-use. The complexity in current upload
protocols is what prevents many data submitters from fully annotating their clinical data for integration into
ImmPort’s structured database. The tool will be an extension of our prototype ImmPort curation approach that
facilitates the formatting of assessment data for submission to ImmPort. The tool will rely on a manually curated
data dictionary to give context to the data in the study files. With that data dictionary and minimal additional
manual input, the approach automates the complex file formatting steps required to transform the data into the
laboratory test submission template. The tool will be developed to guide users through the annotation process
with a graphical user interface, making full annotation of lab test clinical trial data more accessible to researchers
without informatics expertise.
Additionally, to increase confidence and proficiency in re-using clinical study data publicly available through
ImmPort, a comprehensive tutorial based on a secondary analysis of two food allergy related clinical trials shared
through ImmPort will be developed. The tutorial, created in R, will cover various ways of data retrieval,
processing, and an in-depth analysis with visualizations. Overall, this proposal aims to enhance the reusability
of clinical trial data available through ImmPort, thereby increasing the return on investment for biomedical
research and benefiting scientific knowledge and clinical care.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10951964
- **Project number:** 1R03AI185587-01
- **Recipient organization:** CINCINNATI CHILDRENS HOSP MED CTR
- **Principal Investigator:** Sandra Andorf
- **Activity code:** R03 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $80,250
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-06-06 → 2026-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10951964

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10951964, Simplifying the transformation of laboratory test data for integration into the ImmPort database (1R03AI185587-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10951964. Licensed CC0.

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