Cancer drug targets are now largely determined by mutations, rather than tumor tissue. This shift in focus has introduced new challenges for scientists identifying targets. First they must choose the right genomic datasets from disconnected sources; then make aggregate data comparable despite different platforms or analytical pipelines. Human data protection also adds layers of security and legal complexity. In this seminar, we will examine how to overcome these challenges and plan for validating potential targets at the preclinical stage. Download Dennis’s slide deck
Where & When
Room N-114, Genentech Hall, UCSF Mission Bay (600 16th St., San Francisco)
Noon to 1:00 PM, Thursday, June 13
About the Speaker
Dennis Schwartz, Bioinformatics Software Developer, Repositive
Dennis is a software developer and bioinformatician with a keen interest in genomic data sharing and open source software. After earning a BSc (Tübingen University) and MSc (TU & LMU Munich) in Bioinformatics he started working for Repositive in 2016. He spent the majority of the past two years working to better understand the needs of Pharma researchers and how they use genomic data in their search for cancer models in drug target validation. His focus is mainly on untangling the often jargon based requirements of biologists, oncologists and pharmacologists into comparable molecular characteristics which can be detected in next generation sequencing data from a variety of sources. Outside of his role at Repositive he is a contributor and maintainer with the BioJS open source project for the visualisation of biological data on the web. Through his open source work he has spoken at and partially organised multiple workshops, talks and a MOOC (as part of a team at TUM) about Javascript and data visualisation.