On Friday, August 14th @ 12:00PM EDT, we welcome Professor José McFaline-Figueroa from University of Washington as he presents, “Defining drug-induced molecular landscapes with multiplex single-cell genomics.”

ABOUT THE AUGUST 14 WEBINAR

Cancer cells incorporate myriad signals in order to execute their oncogenic programs. Defining the molecular regulation of these programs can allow us to identify successful points of intervention. However, the complexity and scale of cellular signaling networks make defining the contribution of individual genes incredibly laborious with conventional techniques. By treating every cell as a container in an experiment, single-cell technologies afford the opportunity to drastically increase the scale at which we determine how perturbations alter biological processes. In this seminar, I present efforts to develop highly multiplex genetic and chemical transcriptomic screens at single-cell resolution and their application to define the response of cancer to perturbation. I first highlight the power of combining single-cell genetic screens with single-cell trajectory reconstruction to identify regulators of progression along continuous biological processes. I then present sci-Plex, a platform for massively multiplex single-cell chemical transcriptomics, which I recently used to determine the response of cancer cells to diverse small molecules across ~5,000 unique conditions and ~550,000 cells within one single-cell RNA-seq experiment. Going forward, I aim to apply these techniques to define the drug-induced transcriptional response of cancer to kinase-directed therapies. These efforts will result in an actionable description of the dynamic changes that underlie adaptive therapeutic resistance in cancer.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

José McFaline-Figueroa, PhD
University of Washington

In 2006, José L. McFaline-Figueroa received a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. He then moved to Cambridge, MA where he worked as a research technician in the laboratory of Peter Dedon in the Department of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As a research technician, he developed and applied mass spectrometry methods to quantify levels of nucleic acid damage products in DNA and RNA. In 2008 he joined the graduate program at the Department of Biology at MIT where he trained in the laboratories of Dr. Leona Samson and Dr. Forest White. His doctoral research used cell biology, molecular biology, and proteomic approaches to investigate mechanisms by which glioblastoma brain cancer acquires resistance to the chemotherapeutic agent temozolomide. After completing his Ph.D., José joined the laboratory of Cole Trapnell at the University of Washington as a post-doctoral fellow. As a post-doctoral fellow, he has focused on developing single-cell genomic tools that drastically increase the scale at which we determine how perturbations alter cellular response.

BME BREAKS SCHEDULE

August 21 - Christoph Juchem, PhD, Columbia University BME
“In vivo magnetic resonance spectroscopy - a tool for translational and clinical research”

RSVP at the link above!