Faculty Receives Grant to Develop Method That Will Integrate Biomedical Gene Expression Data

Rutgers School of Public Health assistant professor, Wei (Vivian) Li, has received a Busch Biomedical Grant to develop a statistical method and software package that will integrate single-cell level gene expression data from multiple patients, studies, and technological platforms to understand disease-associated cell types and RNA contents, helping researchers develop personalized treatments.  

Many current treatments for various diseases are ineffective because they do not consider the differences of cell-type compositions and gene pathway activities, which can vary greatly between patients.

The new statistical method that is being developed by Li and her team will enable researchers to distinguish patient-specific gene expression patterns from common expression patterns, which will lead to the ability to create treatment that is personalized to each individual’ s transcriptomic profiles.

“The Busch Biomedical Grant will help us develop this innovative method that when coupled with computational pipelines, will provide a promising approach for identifying patient-specific gene expression pathways and cell states, with diagnostic, therapeutic, and prognostic implications,” said Li.

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