EVENTS

Variations in 3D genome structure between homologous mammalian chromosomes

April 25, 2024
2:00-3:00pm ET
Virtual (Register Below)

Dr. Ana Pombo is Professor and Senior Group Leader at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin.

Dr. Pombo’s research group studies the interplay between gene regulation and genome architecture to understand their roles in development and disease. Her group has developed cutting edge techniques such as cryoFISH, a technique to show where genes are located in the nucleus; and Genome Architecture Mapping (GAM), an orthogonal 3D genome folding mapping technology which yields maps of chromatin contacts from small cell numbers and quantifies various metrics of 3D genome structure. Her group has since expanded GAM to develop immuno-GAM, a method that allows the selection of cell types within complex tissues to enable the application of GAM in rare cells; and Oligo-Seq, a novel approach to detect small amounts of specific RNA sequences within thin tissue cryosections.

TITLE TBA

June 6, 2024
2:00-3:0pm ET
Virtual (Register Below)

Dr. Rameen Beroukhim is an Associate Professor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, and an Associate Member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Dr. Beroukhim’s research group studies the somatic genetics of cancer, primarily identifying alterations in chromosome structure that contribute to tumor growth, and how changes to the genome affect cancer behavior. A particular focus of the group is on brain cancers, and they have had significant efforts in endometrial cancers, but they study many cancer types. Dr. Beroukhim’s group also puts a lot of effort into developing computational methods to study the somatic genetics of cancer. For example, they helped develop the Genomic Identification of Significant Targets In Cancer (GISTIC) algorithm; a statistical technique used to identify chromosome changes that are likely to drive tumor development from changes that may occur due to chance alone.

Molecular determinants of treatment response in glioblastoma

October 10, 2024
2:00-3:00pm ET
Virtual (Register Below)

Dr. Sunit Das is a neurosurgeon and scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital and the Hospital for Sick Kids, and Associate Professor and the Keenan Chair in Surgery at the University of Toronto. He currently serves as the Provincial Lead for CNS Oncology at Cancer Care Ontario.

Dr. Das’s research group investigates the biology of stem cells in the normal brain and in primary brain tumors by using real-world data and meta-analysis for clinical translation. Their recent work lies in the bioinformatics space, focusing on the heterogeneity of glioblastoma and patient outcomes. Dr. Das recently joined the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto, where his work focuses on the interface of artificial intelligence (AI) with medicine, issues that underlie professional identity in medicine, and the ethics of surgical innovation.