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Developing new algorithms for PCM and testing them in clinical trials (WINTHER, SPRING, WIN-TAPUR): We are developing and managing the IT for 3 trials sponsored by the WIN consortium: SPRING (opened 2017), WIN-TAPUR and BOOSTER. The SPRING trial tests the benefit to early NSCLC lung cancer patients from specific triple therapy combinations , coupled with an observational trial, in which the value of the SIMS algorithm will be evaluated. The SIMS algorithm was developed in our lab, in collaboration with many others (see publications)
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Developing methods for testing PCM algorithms: we are working to develop a method for comparing PCM scoring schemes without expensive, ethically challenging and hard to implement clinical trials. The goal is to use existing data to test which scoring algorithm performs best.
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Investigating the immune micro-environment of tumors. Despite great progress in cancer immunology, which yielded groundbreaking drugs, much is still unknown about the immune system's (dis) function in the tumor environment. We developed a method to enhance the immune signals from total tumors' RNA-seq, and are applying it to study the immune response to tumors. This approach can be used, in principle, to discover new immune checkpoint drugs, to uncover new pathways of immune activation and inactivation, and to further understand the differences between tumors, tumor types and patients.
This work is done in close collaboration with Prof. Angel Porgador from our department.
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Toward cancer immunization. We are part of a consortium that is trying to develop a new pipeline for cancer immunization as a therapeutic approach. The consortium contains mostly experimental and clinical groups, and our role is to help collect and analyze the experimental results with sufficient speed and accuracy to support clinical care.
This project is lead by Prof. Izhak Haviv from Bar-Ilan Univeristy.
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Searching for cancer prognosis markers. We are using advanced statistical and machine learning methods to search for new markers (or patterns of markers) that predict cancer outcome, with or without treatment.
These project are done in collaboration with Prof. Mark Last from the Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering at Ben-Gurion Univeristy of the Negev, and Dr. Amir Onn from the Sheba Medical Center.
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Other projects. Out lab is also involved in cancer-unrelated topics that push the boundary of our ability to use data. These include the investigation of exotic species and their aging / carcinogen response, a search for suicidal identification markers from electronic health records, and the study of new gene ranking methods and their possible role in cancer research.