Research: Cancer

Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide, and metastasis is responsible for 80% of cancer morbidity and mortality. We collaborate closely with the Bader, Ewald, and Wood labs at Johns Hopkins with the overarching goal of identifying and targeting the drivers of cancer metastasis.

Biological Networks

In cancer, we often know the driver mutations and even the downstream response genes. Unfortunately, these genes may not be druggable. So, we use a network model to capture biological interactions, and then use network perturbation methods (including path integrals!) to identify and prioritize candidate drug targets based on their ability to perturb the interactions that connect driver genes to response genes. Our first paper is freely available in PLOS Comp Bio, and current undergraduate students are working on Monte Carlo versions.

RNA-Seq

We collaborate with experimental groups, using RNA-Seq analysis to understand the drivers of metastasis in pancreatic cancer, and the mechanisms of drug action in liver cancer.