PhD defence by Mona Nourbakhsh

On Wednesday, 26 June, Mona Nourbakhsh will defend her PhD thesis "Discovery of cancer driver genes for precision medicine in childhood cancers".

Time: 10:00

Place: Building 303A, auditorium 45 & zoom: https://dtudk.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5cvcuyhpjIvHN2VABDUm-hsZXDdPKCrxQRD

Please be aware that the PhD defense may be recorded - This will also be informed at the beginning of the PhD defense.

Supervisor: Associate Professor Elena Papaleo

Co-supervisor: MD PhD Karin Anna Wallentin Wadt, University of Copenhagen and Copenhagen University Hospital Rigshospitalet

Professor Kjeld Schmiegelow, University of Copenhagen and University Hospital Rigshospitalet

Assessment committee:
Professor Anders Gorm Pedersen, DTU Health Tech

Professor Jakob Skou Pedersen, Department of Molecular Medicine, Aarhus University

Professor Francesca Ciccarelli, Bart’s Cancer Institute QMUL & Francis Crick Institute, England

Chairperson:
Associate Professor Sunil Kumar Saini, DTU Health Tech

Abstract:
Cancer is a complex and heterogeneous disease affecting millions of people worldwide. From a biological point of view, cancer arises due to changes such as mutations in normal cells which facilitates the transition of these cells into tumor cells. These changes occur in specific genes collectively called cancer driver genes. Today, a wealth of data from cancer patients is available which necessitates analysis and interpretation in the future to increase our understanding of cancer. While data quantity formerly presented a constraint for progress within cancer research, today’s bottleneck lies in the speed of analyzing and interpreting this substantial data volume. Here, bioinformatics plays a crucial role as a key link between analysis of cancer data and clinical decision-making. This PhD aims at increasing our molecular and biological knowledge of cancer development in different cancer types. To this end, this PhD analyzes data from cancer patients through bioinformatic approaches which has resulted in the prediction of several cancer driver genes in breast, lung, and thyroid cancer. Additionally, this PhD has resulted in the discovery of a set of genes that differentiate two subtypes of leukemia and predicted additional subgroups among these patients with leukemia. Collectively, this PhD demonstrates that analysis and integration of different data types offer novel perspectives to increase our understanding of cancer development.