# OncoKB: A Precision Oncology Knowledge Base

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-chakravarty-jco-precis-oncol/  
OnCo record `paper-chakravarty-jco-precis-oncol` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Paper cited by one technology page, indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 28890946 and published in JCO Precision Oncology; the citing page links this DOI, which is how the record was matched.

## Summary

Purpose: With prospective clinical sequencing of tumors emerging as a mainstay in cancer care, there is an urgent need for a clinical support tool that distills the clinical implications associated with specific mutation events into a standardized and easily interpretable format. To this end, we developed OncoKB, an expert-guided precision oncology knowledge base.

Methods: OncoKB annotates the biological and oncogenic effect and the prognostic and predictive significance of somatic molecular alterations. Potential treatment implications are stratified by the level of evidence that a specific molecular alteration is predictive of drug response based on US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) labeling, National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines, disease-focused expert group recommendations and the scientific literature.

Results: To date, over 3000 unique mutations, fusions, and copy number alterations in 418 cancer-associated genes have been annotated. To test the utility of OncoKB, we annotated all genomic events in 5983 primary tumor samples in 19 cancer types. Forty-one percent of samples harbored at least one potentially actionable alteration, of which 7.5% were predictive of clinical benefit from a standard treatment. OncoKB annotations are available through a public web resource (http://oncokb.org/) and are also incorporated into the cBioPortal for Cancer Genomics to facilitate the interpretation of genomic alterations by physicians and researchers.

Conclusion: OncoKB, a comprehensive and curated precision oncology knowledge base, offers oncologists detailed, evidence-based information about individual somatic mutations and structural alterations present in patient tumors with the goal of supporting optimal treatment decisions.

Indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 28890946 (DOI 10.1200/po.17.00011). Matched by DOI alone: one technology page cites this DOI among its external links (the pages are listed under Related), and this page was written so that the citation resolves inside OnCo. No figure has been checked by an editor.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-09-22
- Tags: europepmc-ingest
- Journal: JCO Precision Oncology
- Year: 2017
- DOI: 10.1200/po.17.00011
- Authors: Chakravarty D, Gao J, Phillips SM, et al.
- What it means: One technology page on OnCo cites this paper by its DOI; this record gives the citation a page of its own so a reader can follow it without leaving OnCo. Read the abstract above alongside the citing page listed under Related; the record was created automatically from the Europe PMC entry and its figures have not been checked by hand.
- Caveats: Matched to the citing OnCo records by DOI alone; the summary reproduces the Europe PMC abstract and no figure has been verified against the full paper.

## Sources

- JCO Precis Oncol 2017: https://doi.org/10.1200/po.17.00011
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28890946/
- Europe PMC: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/28890946

## Connected records

- technologies: [Cancer variant knowledgebases and molecular tumour boards](https://onco.cc/technologies/variant-knowledgebases/)
- journals: [JCO Precision Oncology](https://onco.cc/journals/jco-precision-oncology/)

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