PRESS RELEASE Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) has received a $6.5 million, up to two-year, federally funded contract from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH). ISB is one of three organizations awarded a contract by NCI to develop a cloud-based platform that will serve as a large-scale data repository and provide the computational infrastructure necessary to carry out cancer genomics research at unprecedented scales. ISB’s Shmulevich…
3 Bullets: Gastric cancer has a high mortality rate, but current classification systems haven’t been effective in helping to identify subtypes relevant for treatment of the disease. TCGA researchers have integrated molecular data from 295 stomach tumors and have discovered four subtypes of gastric cancer. Stratification of patients into these four subtypes paves the way for the development of new personalized therapies. By Theo Knijnenburg Gastric cancer is among the…
Photo: Theo Knijnenburg, a research scientist in ISB's Shmulevich Lab, presentaed a summary of his work related to gene mutations and cancer drug sensitivity. Systems biology is about the culture as much as a scientific approach. ISB and Seattle BioMed have an inter-institutional agreement that enables the collective to benefit from shared knowledge and technology resources. For the second consecutive year, we held Lightning Talks (June 12) to allow researchers…
By Theo Knijnenburg ISB Editorial Board Member When a patient receives a diagnosis of breast cancer, it’s a specific subtype of breast cancer, such as invasive ductal carcinoma. Each subtype is characterized by the shape and location of the tumor, its growth progression, prognosis and treatment. The ability to stratify, or group, cancer patients based on the specific characteristics of their cancer type, is the first step toward personalized cancer…
By Sui Huang and Joseph Zhou, ISB Editorial Board Members Cancer cells, for decades regarded as a uniform mass of identical (“clonal”) cells, are not like the soldiers of a traditional army, trained to act and respond in unison. Cancer cells, even within a genetic clone, express enormous individuality akin to guerrilla fighters, each with unique strengths, weaknesses and distinct behaviors. Therefore, they do not respond to an attack from…
ISB held its 13th Annual International Symposium: Systems Biology & Cancers From Big Data to Personalized Treatment on April 13-14, 2014. Visit symposium.isbscience.net for details. Visit the gallery for images. Or visit the video playlist on ISB’s YouTube channel.
By Varsha Dhankani Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common and deadliest of malignant primary brain tumors in adults. Because of its lethality, GBM was selected as the first brain tumor to be sequenced as part of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), a comprehensive project funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) to map the genomes of more than 25 types…
Ilya Shmulevich, PhD, shares this message about our hosting a TCGA (The Cancer Genome Atlas) steering committee meeting at ISB. In the video below, Ilya explains the purpose of the meeting and chats briefly about “pan-cancer” – the effort to find commonalities among multiple cancers. Related content: Read about ISB’s role in TCGA as a Genome Data Analysis Center and about the most recent collaborative paper on endometrial cancer, which…
When you see a reference to “cancer research,” you know that it’s important. But do you really know what it means and how complex the research is? Many ISB scientists are entrenched in molecular cancer research. To better appreciate what they’re tackling, let’s talk about The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project. In understanding cancers, researchers first have to know what errors in the DNA of tumor cells cause them to…
The Ilya Shmulevich Group at ISB has been participating in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project as a Genome Data Analysis Center. The first paper resulting from the main phase of the TCGA project – "Comprehensive molecular characterization of human colon and rectal cancer" – was published in the July 19, 2012, issue of Nature and also featured on the front page of the New York Times. ISB teamed up…
We were very excited to watch the live stream of the keynote from the Google I/O conference today, because it featured work from ISB's Shmulevich Lab, which is one of a group of research organizations that has been working on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). To help visualize the TCGA data, the lab created the Cancer Regulome Explorer using Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine. Google Compute Engine is…
