Single Cell Pharmacodynamic Modeling Of Cancer Cell Lines, Arnab Mutsuddy

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Cancer is one of the leading causes of disease related death worldwide. Since the discovery of the genomic origins of cancer, targeted therapy has been developed towards specific mutations implicated for oncogenic transformation. However, current standard-of-care for mapping cancer patients to efficacious drug combination is often inadequate. The pathophysiology of tumor progression relies on the dysregulation of biomolecular pathways of which the topology and the dynamics challenge prognosis. Moreover, the overall genomic instability involved in disease states and the resulting inter-patient as well as intra-tumoral heterogeneity challenge rationalization of therapy and clinical decision-making. It highlights the need for the use …

Interpretable Mechanistic And Machine Learning Models For Pre-Dicting Cardiac Remodeling From Biochemical And Biomechanical Features, Anamul Haque

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Biochemical and biomechanical signals drive cardiac remodeling, resulting in altered heart physiology and the precursor for several cardiac diseases, the leading cause of death for most racial groups in the USA. Reversing cardiac remodeling requires medication and device-assisted treatment such as Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy (CRT), but current interventions produce highly variable responses from patient to patient. Mechanistic modeling and Machine learning (ML) approaches have the functionality to aid diagnosis and therapy selection using various input features. Moreover, 'Interpretable' machine learning methods have helped make machine learning models fairer and more suited for clinical application. The overarching objective of this doctoral …

Combining Network Modeling And Experimental Approaches To Predict Drug Combination Responses, Deepraj Sarmah

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Cancer is a lethal disease and complex at multiple levels of cell biology. Despite many advances in treatments, many patients do not respond to therapy. This is owing to the complexity of cancer-genetic variability due to mutations, the multi-variate biochemical networks within which drug targets reside and existence and plasticity of multiple cell states. It is generally understood that a combination of drugs is a way to address the multi-faceted drivers of cancer and drug resistance. However, the sheer number of testable combinations and challenges in matching patients to appropriate combination treatments are major issues.

Here, we first present a …

Data-Driven Biomarker Panel Discovery In Ovarian Cancer Using Heterogenous Data Fusion On Exosomal And Non-Exosomal Microrna Expression Data, Paritra Mandal

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Ovarian cancer (OC) is an aggressive gynecological cancer and is currently the 5th leading cause of deaths due to cancer in women. High mortality rates are attributable to the vague pathogenesis and asymptomatic nature of the early stages. The development of a liquid biopsy for routine OC screening could help identify the disease at an earlier stage, making treatments more likely to be effective thereby increasing survival rates. Exosomes, small (~100nm) extracellular vesicles present in body fluids, have been shown to contain cancer-progression, onset, and related factors, making them good candidates for use in liquid biopsies. However, to date, only …

The Crayfish (Decapoda: Cambaridae) Subgenus Hiaticambarus: Undescribed Diversity And Life History Characteristics Of Selected Members, Danny Jones

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A taxonomic study of the crayfish species Cambarus (Hiaticambarus) longirostris was conducted. Multivariate and univariate statistical analyses of morphometric data and examination of morphological characters revealed the existence of four undescribed species from populations previously considered to belong to C. longirostris; these were located on the southern extents of the range of C. longirostris. Three of these new species were morphologically similar to the group of species containing C. coosawattae, C. chasmodactylus, C. elkensis, C. longirostris, C. longulus, and C. manningi, while one was morphologically similar to the C. fasciatus, C. …