
Webber et al, Cell Systems (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2018.10.001
Sourav Bandyopadhyay’s lab at UCSF is seeking a strategy to disrupt cancer pathways. Their approach is to identify how biological networks within cancer cells differ from those of normal cells; and develop technological platforms to design precise cancer therapies targeting those differences.
In a recent Cell Systems paper, lab members James Webber and Swati Kaushik describe an approach to compress data from the multi-omic characterization of hundreds of cancers into a small set of pathway-enriched gene modules using their MAGNETIC (modular analysis of gene networks in cancer) platform. These patient-derived modules can then be compared with data from cell lines, which reveal components of the tumor microenvironment that serve as biomarkers for therapeutic responses.