Unlocking Cancer Insights: Introducing the R2 Platform


Every year, millions of people are diagnosed with cancer — a disease that, despite its name, is not one condition but thousands. Understanding why tumors behave differently from patient to patient is one of the most pressing challenges in modern medicine. A major breakthrough came with The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), a landmark project that molecularly mapped over 30 types of cancer across thousands of patients. But having data is only half the battle. Making sense of it — quickly, reliably, and without needing a team of bioinformaticians — is where progress stalls.

That's the problem R2 was built to solve.

R2 is a free, browser-based platform that puts powerful cancer genomics analysis in the hands of any researcher or clinician, no coding required. Drawing on TCGA RNA-seq and clinical data from 31 cancer types, R2 lets you ask — and answer — complex biological questions in minutes.

Here's what you can do with it:

  • Compare gene activity across cancer types and patient groups — See how a gene of interest behaves in tumor versus normal tissue, or across clinical subgroups like cancer stage, tumor grade, or other patient characteristics.
  • Link gene expression to patient outcomes — Explore whether high or low expression of a gene is associated with better or worse survival, helping pinpoint candidates for new diagnostic or therapeutic targets.
  • Discover what's driving a tumor subtype — Identify the most significantly over- or underexpressed genes in any cancer group, offering a fast route to hypothesis generation.


R2 is already making an impact: it has been cited in more than 2,700 PubMed-listed publications, reflecting its value to the global research community. Whether you're validating a target gene, exploring a new hypothesis, or simply trying to understand the molecular landscape of a cancer type, R2 provides the tools to do it — intuitively and openly.

Ready to explore? R2 is publicly available at r2.amc.nl.

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