Deciphering Genome Dynamics for Subtype-specific Therapy in Pancreatic Cancer
Project Partners
Speaker: Prof. Dr. med. Volker Ellenrieder University Medical Center Göttingen Department of Gastroenterology and Gastrointestinal Oncology
Coordinator: PD Dr. med. Elisabeth Hessmann University Medical Center Göttingen Department of Gastroenterology and Gastrointestinal Oncology
CP2:
Department of Medical Bioinformatics (UMG) PI: Prof. Dr. Tim Beißbarth
Department of Medical Informatics PI: Prof. Dr. Uli Sax
NGS Integrative Genomics Core Unit (NIG), UMG PI: Dr. Gabriela Salinas
Aims of the project
The treatment of ductal pancreatic carcinoma (PDAC) is one of the greatest challenges of modern cancer medicine.
According to current surveys, pancreatic carcinoma will be the second most common cancer-related cause of death in Western countries within a few years. The main reasons for the infaust prognosis are above all the aggressive tumour growth and the pronounced resistance to conventional therapeutic approaches.
The aim of this Clinical Research Group (KFO) is to characterise the mechanistic basis, tumour biological consequences and therapeutic potential of these subtype-specific changes in genome dynamics in PDAC. The KFO 5002 involves 16 project leaders from the University Medical School Göttingen (UMG) with complementary expertise in PDAC patient care, basic research, and bio- and medical informatics. The seven closely interlinked scientific projects (SP) of the KFO are supported by two central projects , which comprise preclinical tumour models (CP1) as well as sequencing and biomedical informatics platforms (CP2).
Contribution of the Department of Medical Bioinformatics
CP2: Biomedical Informatics Support Platform (BISP)
In the framework of the CRU 5002 the Biomedical Informatics Support Platform (BISP) of CP2 is responsible for providing IT structures, bioinformatic methods and pipelines to store, analyse and integrate the numerous phenotypic, genomic and functional data generated in SP1-7 and CP1. Further, the data of the CRU is merged and analyzed in the context of the comprehensive clinical annotations gathered in the MolPAC program.
In this core project Next-Generation-Sequencing studies and transcriptome analyses are performed on a central platform for all genomic analyses required throughout the consortium as well as for translational PDAC models established in CP1.
In addition, CP2 offers statistical consulting to all scientific sub projects for the meaningful planning and execution of their genomic experiments. CP2 is responsible for the execution of comprehensive bioinformatic analyses and the qualified interpretation of genomic data.
Finally, CP2 integrates molecular subtyping data collected within the CRU 5002 with published data on PDAC subgroups and supports CP1 in comparing PDAC PDX-models and organoids for their subtype consistency.
