Systems Biology analysis of Gender specific Molecular Biomarkers in Human Cancer, based on GDOC-Plus study collection

Payal Banerjee (Mentor: Dr. Yuriy Gusev, Innovation Center for Biomedical Informatics, Department of Oncology, Georgetown University)

September 1st, 2015, 2:00-2:20pm, Room 1300, Harris Building

This project aims to analyze molecular profiling datasets of REMBRANDT database of brain neoplasms recently transitioned to GDOC-Plus study collection from the NCI to identify gender specific molecular biomarkers in brain cancer. Data types available for analysis include: gene expression, DNA copy number variation and clinical outcome information. Datasets from the five major brain tumor types were first analyzed for gender specific gene expression signatures using G-DOC-Plus platform on-line. After subsets of significant differentially expressed genes and DNA regions were identified, the data was further analyzed outside of GDOC using software packages in R and other computational tools such as Pathway Studio. Gene set and pathway enrichment analysis were applied to detect the major pathways and biological processes affected differently in male vs female patient’s cohorts. Further meta-analysis of brain cancer and CA_Array lung cancer datasets at GDOC-Plus revealed some cancer specific gender related molecular differences.