Announcing the Winner of our Single Cell DNA Methylation and RNA Data Integration Abstract Challenge!
Challenge Winner
James Nicholson, Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Queen Mary University of London
James is investigating glioblastoma epigenetic clonal evolution and will build a tool that leverages the inherent genetic information captured by ScaleBio's scRNA/DNAme-seq technologies to construct integrated single cell phylogenesis that capture the hierarchical relationships between different epigenetic and transcriptional states.
About James's Project
The degree to which tumour genetics is coupled to epigenetic and transcriptional states remains largely unknown in glioblastoma (GBM). Currently all patients succumb to recurrences under therapy, yet large scale longitudinal studies have shown minimal evidence of clonal evolution. This suggests that GBM recurrence is instead driven by epigenetics, and indeed the only clinically used prognostic factor for GBM is MGMT DNA Methylation levels.
My project will use paired scDNAme/scRNAseq on patient-derived Glioma stem cells (GSCs) treated with TMZ/radiation and evaluate longitudinal changes in epigenetic/transcriptional heterogeneity. Our analysis will focus on using the inherent genetic information captured by both scRNA/DNAme data to construct single cell phylogenies, where the genetic relationship between each cell is known and tree terminals are overlaid by their epigenetic or transcriptional state. We anticipate a tool capable of such analyses will be of broad interest to the cancer research community.
We would like to thank our panel of judges for their valuable time and input
