Dr. Florian Markowetz, Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, University of Cambridge, Li Ka Shing Centre
Wednesday 3rd December, 4.00 p.m., Stacey Lecture Theatre 1
I will talk about computational methods to address heterogeneity of breast and ovarian cancer at different levels:
(i) At the *population* level breast cancer appears in different subtypes and I will talk about our recent work on finding 10 different manifestations of the disease.
(ii) At the *patient* level, different cancer sites can differ significantly in the genomic aberrations they carry. I will discuss how to quantify intra-patient heterogeneity by rigorous analysis of multiple patient samples.
(iii) At the *sample* level we often find cancer cells mixed with immune cells, stromal cells and others. This mixture of cells leads to a mixture of signals when DNA, RNA, or proteins are measured in these samples. I will present an automated and quantitative approach that leverages image analysis of histopathological images to estimate cellular composition and complement genomic profiling.