ncibtep@nih.gov

Bioinformatics Training and Education Program

AI-Driven Spatial Transcriptomics Unlocks Large-Scale Breast Cancer Biomarker Discovery from Histopathology

AI-Driven Spatial Transcriptomics Unlocks Large-Scale Breast Cancer Biomarker Discovery from Histopathology

 When: May. 7th, 2025 11:00 am - 12:00 pm

Learning Level: Any

To Know

Where:
Online Webinar
Organizer:
CBIIT
Presented By:
Eytan Ruppin, MD, Ph.D (CCR Cancer Data Science Lab)

About this Class

Join Dr. Eytan Ruppin, NCI investigator in the Center for Cancer Research, as he discusses Path2Space, a new and unpublished deep learning approach that predicts spatial gene expression directly from histopathology slides.

Spatial transcriptomics (ST) is transforming our understanding of tumor heterogeneity by providing high-resolution, location-specific mapping of gene expression within tumors and their microenvironment. However, high costs have restricted the size of cohorts, limiting large-scale biomarker discovery.

With Path2Space, you can:

  • predict the spatial expression of over 4,300 breast cancer genes in independent validations, thereby outperforming existing ST predictors.
  • accurately infer cell-type abundances in the tumor microenvironment (TME).
  • apply to over 1,000 breast tumor histopathology slides from the TCGA, characterizing their TME on an unprecedented scale, and identify new spatially grounded breast cancer subgroups with distinct survival rates.
  • infer TME landscapes, enabling more accurate predictions of patients’ response to chemotherapy and trastuzumab.
  • operate a transformative, fast, and cost-effective approach to robustly delineate the TME.