Developing methods for multi-omic data integration and utilisation in pharmaco-genetic and -genomic analysis of drug responders and non-responders

Lead Research Organisation: Imperial College London
Department Name: National Heart and Lung Institute

Abstract

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airway that mostly responds to topical corticosteroids. However, 5-10% of patients have severe disease that fails to respond well to treatment. This bioinformatic project utilise multi-omic data obtained from the pan-European U-BIOPRED severe asthma cohort to investigate the role of the microbiome in directing biological processes associated with subtypes of severe asthma whilst the second project uses network fusion and other approaches to merge different omics datasets and investigate drug responses. The project will involve state-of-the-art bioinformatics approaches to analyse metagenomic, genetic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomics data stored within the TransMart KM system

Studentship Projects

Project Reference Relationship Related To Start End Student Name
BB/R505663/1 06/11/2017 05/11/2021
1958049 Studentship BB/R505663/1 06/11/2017 05/11/2021
 
Description My research has potential for translational impact; addressing therapy needs of severe asthmatics and airway disease patients. Asthma is hetergenous, most therapies are developed for the majority of sufferers. Here we have possibly identified a number of novel therapies for those suffering from non-mainstream severe asthma subtypes and furthermore we have phenotyped the specific types of asthma patients that may be candidates for these drugs.
Exploitation Route Clinical trials and animal model studies of the novel therapies for asthma we have identified with specific pre-selection of asthma patients in accordance with the phenotypes of potential responders we have identified.
Sectors Healthcare,Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology
URL https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/54/suppl_63/OA1606
 
Description Investigated potential of novel anti-IL22 biologic with Prof. Emma Guttman and her lab at Mount Sinai, NYC 
Organisation Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Country United States 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution My PI Prof. Ian Adcock and industrial PhD supervisor, at the time, John Riley (GSK, Stevenage) secured funding for me to undertake a 3 month research collaberation with the Ichann School of Medicine, Mount Sinai Hosptial, NYC. I collaberated with the lab of Prof. Emma Guttman to learn bioinformatics methods to computationally investigate potential use of an anti-IL22 drug in asthma. This drug had been trialed successfully in atopic dermatits and I obtained drug response gene signatures from good clinical responders from their data and performed studies to identify and phenotype asthma patients which are elevated in these gene signatures.
Collaborator Contribution I was hosted by the lab of Prof Emma Guttman and her team at the Ichann School of Medicine, Mount Sinai Hosptial, NYC. I was encouraged to expand my understanding of inflammatory diseases by attending lectures. I was directly supervised by a bioinformatics specialist (Dr Ana Pavel Brandusa) and learned a great deal from her mentoring.
Impact Currently one European Resp. Journal abstract: Is Fezakinumab, an anti-IL22 antibody, a putative novel therapy for a subset of severe asthma? Yusef Badi, Ana B Pavel, John H Riley, Kian F Chung, Emma Guttman-Yassky, Ian M Adcock European Respiratory Journal Sep 2019, 54 (suppl 63) OA1606; DOI: 10.1183/13993003.congress-2019.OA1606 Yes, this involves computational biology / biostatistics, clinical medicine research, airway disease, dermatology.
Start Year 2018