A Comparative Analysis of the Molecular Characteristics of Canine and Human Gliomas

About this Class

This July, the CGC Webinar Series features a talk by Dr. Nadia Lanman from Purdue University.

In this upcoming webinar, Dr. Lanman will present her research studying human gliomas using dog as a model organism. Spontaneous gliomas in dogs are being used as a translational model for human glioma, but molecular characterization is not yet complete.  This work utilizes publicly available datasets to characterize the molecular characteristics of canine gliomas. Dr. Lanman shows how key canonical pathways altered in human gliomas are likewise altered in canine gliomas, and how the canine tumor microenvironment (TME), like that in humans, appears to be immunosuppressive. Gene expression profiles of astrocytomas and oligodendrogliomas show alterations in a number of signaling pathways, including several immune-related and TME-specific pathways.  Dr. Lanman and her team will show how they developed a Naïve Bayes classifier that accurately classifies canine glioma pathologies based on gene expression profiles alone.

Dr. Lanman is a research assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Pathobiology at Purdue University. In 2015, Dr. Lanman took a position with the Purdue University Center for Cancer Research, directing the Computational Genomics Shared Resource (CG-SR) and managing the Purdue side of the Collaborative Core for Cancer Bioinformatics (C3B), a joint bioinformatics core shared between IU and Purdue. Dr. Lanman’s work at the cancer center focuses on managing the bioinformatics core, training, and data analysis. Dr. Lanman’s research is focused on utilizing large genomics datasets to expand our knowledge of the molecular basis of cancer as well as immune and inflammatory diseases. Dr. Lanman is particularly interested in data integration and in developing methods for datasets that leverage temporal or spatial resolution.