Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Multi-Omics Integration For Gene Fusion Discovery And Somatic Mutation Haplotyping In Cancer, Steven Mason Foltz

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cancer is a disease caused by changes to the genome and dysregulation of gene expression. Among many types of mutations, including point mutations, small insertions and deletions, large scale structural variants, and copy number changes, gene fusions are another category of genomic and transcriptomic alteration that can lead to cancer and which can serve as therapeutic targets. We studied gene fusion events using data from The Cancer Genome Atlas, including over 9,000 patients from 33 cancer types, finding patterns of gene fusion events and dysregulation of gene expression within and across cancer types. With data from the CoMMpass study (Multiple …

Survival Analysis In A Clinical Setting, Yunzhao Liu

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the fast paced advancement of modern medicine, cancer treatments have improved greatly over the past few decades; however, the overall survival rate has not improved for head neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). Traditionally, the general affected population of HNSCC was male over 50-60 years of age, whom have had history of alcohol and tobacco use. Conversely, in the recent decades, HNSCC has exhibited significant rise in younger patients, largely due to the increase in human papillomavirus (HPV) infection among young adults.

Generally, HPV as the most prevalent sexually transmitted disease, consisted of strains that do not cause harm to …