Cancer Data Science Pulse

CBIIT’s May 19 Data Science Seminar Series speaker, Dr. Kristen Naegle, took the speed of computational biology, blended it with basic science know-how, and developed an algorithm that is proving to be remarkably effective in predicting kinase activity. Understanding kinases in oncology may help identify people who are more likely to respond (or not respond) to certain medications, further advancing precision medicine.

Dr. Charles Wang offers a sneak peek at his upcoming Data Science Seminar presentation, scheduled for April 7. His recent study provides guidance for choosing an appropriate scRNA-seq platform and software tool for a scRNA-seq study. Using these guidelines, scientists can select the workflow that will yield the most meaningful results.

Imagine a day when your healthcare is so personalized that there’s no guessing as to what medication will work best for you or whether you are at risk for a particular disease. This is a bold prediction recently addressed by genomic experts, Dr. Karen Miga and Dr. Evan Eichler. This blog examines how advances in technology are drawing us closer to a time when genomic information becomes a routine part of every patient’s healthcare.

The use of bioinformatics in cancer research helps organize vast amounts of data to allow researchers to identify information, trends, and correlations, ranging from very large populations of people all the way down to a single molecule. NCI's Dr. Daoud Meerzaman describes how data science is helping pinpoint the contributions of a single protein, bromodomain protein 4 (BRD4), and its effects on the development of tumors and progression of cancer.

Dr. Nathalie Pochet highlights the Informatics Technology for Cancer Research Program and the support it provides for informatics tools development, including the *AMARETTO framework that is being leveraged to identify novel mechanisms of viral carcinogenesis.

NCI funding opportunity announcement for an Informatics Technology for Cancer Research (ITCR) Education Resource. The ITCR Education Resource will be a new, overarching component of the ITCR program, with the overall mission to conduct activities that engage the research and informatics community to use and extend the ITCR technologies.

To kick off the recent Cancer Informatics for Cancer Centers (CI4CC) Spring Symposium, we had the pleasure of organizing a workshop about "The Role of Academic Technology Development in Cancer Research." The goal of the workshop was to discuss the role of academic informatics technology in cancer research, with an emphasis on technology developed through the Information Technology for Cancer Research (ITCR) program.