Kaplan-Meier plotter

The Kaplan-Meier plotter is an online bioinformatics tool designed for meta-analysis of gene expression data and its association with patient survival outcomes across a wide range of cancer types. It allows researchers to rapidly assess the prognostic value of individual genes, miRNAs, proteins, and DNA methylation markers by generating Kaplan-Meier survival curves and performing statistical tests. The platform integrates expression data from more than 40,000 samples spanning 21 tumor types, including breast, lung, gastric, ovarian, prostate, colon, pancreatic, liver, myeloma, and AML, among others. A dedicated clinical subsystem contains survival information from over 3.55 million patients, enabling large-scale validation. Users can input a gene symbol, probe set ID, or miRNA name, select a cancer type and specific clinical parameters (e.g., stage, grade, hormone receptor status, treatment history), and define the patient stratification method (e.g., median, quartile, or user-specified cutoffs). The tool automatically retrieves the corresponding expression and survival data, computes hazard ratios (HR) with 95% confidence intervals and log-rank p-values, and displays the Kaplan-Meier plot with a summary table. Cox proportional hazards regression is applied to adjust for covariates, and the false discovery rate (FDR) is calculated to control for multiple testing when analyzing multiple genes simultaneously. The platform supports analysis at multiple molecular levels: mRNA expression from microarray and RNA-seq sources, miRNA expression, protein expression (via reverse-phase protein arrays), and DNA methylation status. Users can also perform pan-cancer analysis across all available tumor types to identify universal or tissue-specific prognostic markers. For breast cancer