College of Pharmacy
Twin Cities
This laboratory’s main research focus is translational pharmacogenomics with particular interest in the pharmacogenomics of anti-cancer agents. By systematically evaluating the human genome and its relationships to drug response and toxicity, the lab's goal is to develop clinically useful models that predict risks for adverse drug reactions and non-response prior to administration of chemotherapy. Specifically, the theme of this research evolved around the idea of cell-based pharmacogenomics, which utilizes in vitro models for biomarker discovery and prediction model construction, followed by in vivo validation. The researchers routinely use cell lines (derived from healthy and disease individuals as well as commercially available cancer cell lines) and clinical samples to discover and functionally characterize genetic variation and gene, microRNA (miRNA), and long non-coding RNA expression for their roles in drug sensitivity. They also aim to build pre-clinical computational models that utilize large-scale genomic and transcriptomic data to decipher tumor heterogeneity and drug resistance in advanced cancers.
Since 2021 this group has been actively developing algorithms that utilize single-cell sequencing data to predict drug combinations for treatments of resistant cancers. They aim to validate the models using a diverse collection of single-cell RNA sequencing data from patient tumors, in vitro organoids, and cancer cell lines.