Sagarika Kanjilal, Principal Investigator
Vivek Kapur, Co-Principal Investigator

Comparative Cancer Genomics

This group’s research is focused on elucidating basic mechanisms of cancer pathogenesis and progression using molecular and comparative genomic approaches. The project can be categorized into three thematic areas:

• Identification of molecular markers and gene-expression profiles in tumor development and progression.
• Characterization of the cancer genome through analyses of human and feline tumor carrier deoxyribonucleic acid (cDNA) libraries and cat bacterial artificial chromosome libraries.
• Elucidation of molecular response to chemotherapeutic agents and discovery of novel drug targets.

The group is using the resources of the Computational Genetics Laboratory to store and analyze batches of sequence files and microarray data sets, both from Affymetrix GeneChip and custom cDNA array experiments. Further work will involve visualizing, accessing, and querying the information using existing or custom software tools.