Studying abnormal gene or protein expression data in disease can be used to identify genes capable of not only discerning disease mechanisms but also serving as therapeutic targets. Baseline normal gene and protein expression across human cell types, tissues and cell lines can be used as a reference to discover target genes that are aberrantly expressed only in the disease.

Here, target discovery identifies targets in terms of ecDNA genes from the RNA-seq data of the sample we wish to target. By comparing input samples with the processed RNA-seq and proteomics data from several atlases, it identifies ecDNA genes that are highly expressed in the target samples compared to normal human cell types, tissues, and cell lines.