Distinguished Speaker Series: Single-cell transcriptomics based precision oncology
Prof. Eytan Ruppin, Chief, Cancer Data Science Lab, NCI, NIH
February 3 2021 at 16:00 (Israel time)
Title: Single-cell transcriptomics based precision oncology
Abstract: Precision oncology has made significant advances, mainly by targeting actionable mutations and fusion events involving cancer driver genes. Aiming to expand treatment opportunities, recent studies have begun to explore the utility of the tumor transcriptome to guide patient treatment. My presentation will have two parts: (1) First, I will review recent results from SELECT, which predicts patient response to cancer therapy from the bulk tumor transcriptome. As I will show, it is predictive of about 80% of targeted and immunotherapy therapies across a large cohort of clinical trials, laying a basis for future prospective clinical studies. (2) Second, and the main focus of my presentation, I will describe MadHitter, a new approach for guiding precision cancer therapy based on single cell tumor transcriptomics. This is ongoing work and I will show its application for finding new target combinations in cancer and for stratifying patients to therapy. If time permits, I shall briefly review additional expression analysis tools recently developed in my lab, including gene expression deconvolution (CODEFACS) and intratumoral bacteria/viral detection from tumor single cell transcriptomics (CSI-Microbes).
Host: Prof. Ron Shamir, School of Computer Science