Life Sciences Commons^™

Immunological Factors Associated With Siv/ Shiv Persistence In Diverse Tissue Niches, Omalla A. Olwenyi

Theses & Dissertations

The significant challenge towards a successful HIV cure lies in eradicating persistent viral reservoirs across diverse tissue niches. As a result, HIV-infected individuals have to resort to lifelong antiretroviral therapy. Recent news of supposed HIV eradication in a second patient has further re-invigorated the fields of HIV cure. However, a few barriers remain, such as the lack of currently available assays to accurately quantify viral reservoirs, limited information on cellular factors associated with persistence, and varied dynamics of the viral reservoir in various body compartments. Lastly, HIV-infected individuals live different lifestyles stemming from comorbid substance abuse including consumption of morphine, …

Integrative Analysis Of Multi-Omics Kinome Data And Virtual Screening Of Identified Targets With Pan-Cancer Application, Siddesh Southekal

Theses & Dissertations

Cancer is a heterogeneous disease characterized by the uncontrolled growth and dissemination of abnormal cells. Unfortunately, it is also challenging to treat due to the heterogeneous nature of the tumors and the lack of known drugs that are effective against all tumor subpopulations.

The human protein kinases represent an essential and diverse family of enzymes and are often dysregulated in cancer. The human kinome comprises only around 2% of all coding genes of the human genome but phosphorylates about 30% of cellular proteins critical for regulating various biological processes such as cell proliferation, cell cycle progression, apoptosis, motility, growth, differentiation, …

Strainiq: An N-Gram-Based Method To Identify And Quantify Microbial Communities In Metagenomic Samples, Sanjit Pandey

Theses & Dissertations

Microbes are ubiquitous in nature, and they play vital roles in various processes associated with metabolism in the human body, photosynthesis in plants, or decomposition of waste in the environment. Hence, it is essential to understand how the composition of microbial communities affects the ecosystem of different environments ranging from ocean floors to hot springs to the human body. Microbial communities present in different human body sites are of particular importance due to their implications in the cause and prevention of human diseases. The traditional approaches limit microbial research to exclusively studying species that can be successfully cultured in the …

Mucin And Splice Variant Profiles Of Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma Predict Patient Survival And Subtyping, Christopher M. Thompson

Theses & Dissertations

PDAC is a pancreatic epithelial malignancy and demonstrates aggressive progression and bleak patient prognosis. Despite decades of research, the evolution of novel diagnostics and intervention modalities for PDAC is stagnant. This dissertation explores the characteristic aberrant and elevated expression of mucins in PDAC. Beginning with the hypothesis that mucins are associated with disease aggressiveness, analysis of PDAC patient survival in TCGA revealed no associations between single mucin expression and patient survival. This led to the underlying issue of PDAC tumor cellularity since this disease demonstrates variability in the proportion of cancer cells within the tumor. Tumor purity assessed with the …

Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, And Maintenance Of Mobile Electronic Clinical Decision Support Tools Deployed As Part Of National Quality Improvement Projects, Ellen K. Kerns

Theses & Dissertations

Electronic clinical decision support (ECDS) tools are often developed within quality improvement (QI) projects to increase adherence with the latest clinical practice guidelines. However, the potential reach and maintenance of ECDS use beyond the time and location of their associated project are very limited. Deploying ECDS using a mobile app (mECDS) has shown the potential to be a viable method of overcoming these limitations. However, it is unclear what pattern the reach and adoption of such a tool might follow and what effect this use has on clinical practice. Our team developed an app which contained two different mECDS tools …

Development Of In-Silico Pipelines For Identification And Characterization Of Biomarker Panels And Therapeutic Interventions In Gastro-Intestinal (Gi) Cancers, Pranita Atri

Theses & Dissertations

Gastro-intestinal (GI) malignancies, including gastric, colorectal, and pancreatic cancers, have maintained their high overall mortality due to a lack of prognostic and diagnostic biomarkers and potential therapeutic modalities. While efforts have been made to improve both early detection and therapeutic interventions in these cancers, failure of conventional approaches have proven to be a big challenge, and alternate approaches are needed. Computational biology approaches owing to lesser time and more per target success rate offer a unique solution here. The current study explored the use of computational biology techniques to study the various aspects relating to GI malignancies. First, we sought …