Frontiers in Biostatistics Seminar
Tuesday September 26, 2023 @ 10am ET
Center for Life Sciences Building, Room 11081
Elana Fertig, PhD
Division Director of Oncology Quantitative Sciences, Professor of Oncology
Johns Hopkins University
Combining genomics with mathematical modeling provides a forecast system that can yield computational predictions to anticipate cancer progression and therapeutic response. High-throughput profiling technologies can indicate the molecular and cellular pathways of malignancies, but not the effect of targeting those pathways with therapy. Precision interception requires relating therapies to the cellular phenotypes underlying pancreatic carcinogenesis. This talk presents a hybrid computational and experimental strategy to uncover interactions between neoplastic cells and the microenvironment during pancreatic carcinogenesis. As pancreatic cancer develops, it forms a complex microenvironment of multiple interacting cells. The microenvironment of advanced pancreatic cancer includes a heterogeneous and dense population of cells, such as macrophages and fibroblasts, that are associated with immunosuppression. New single-cell and spatial molecular profiling technologies enable unprecedented characterization of the cellular and molecular composition of the microenvironment. These technologies provide the potential to identify candidate therapeutics to intercept immunosuppression in pancreatic cancer. State-of-the-art mathematical approaches in computational biology are essential to uncover mechanistic insights for high-throughput data for these precision interception strategies.
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