Nadia Lanman, Research Associate Professor for the Purdue Institute for Cancer Research and the Department of Comparative Pathobiology, Manager of Collaborative Core for Cancer Bioinformatics, and Director of Computational Genomics Shared Resource // College of Veterinary MedicineAndrew Mesecar, Robert W. Miller Director of the Purdue Institute for Cancer Research, Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry, Walther Professor of Cancer Structural Biology, and Assistant Vice President of Research // Colleges of Agriculture and Science
Deborah Knapp, Dolores L. McCall Professor and Distinguished Professor of Comparative Oncology, Director of the Evan and Sue Ann Werling Comparative Oncology Research Center // College of Veterinary Medicine
For more than three decades, research on the striking similarities between invasive bladder cancer in dogs and humans has focused on separate aspects of the disease, such as risk factors, early detection, symptoms, treatment, and gene expression. Mesecar, Lanman, and Knapp are involved in a new project at Purdue that combines many types of data into a “digital twin” model of bladder cancer—one that may prove powerful enough to predict patient outcomes, starting with the probability of metastasis in both dogs and humans. By building two comprehensive models—one focused on canine data and one on human data—both will help inform each other, leading to discovery and innovation in cancer treatment. Methods employed by our Computational Genomics and Collaborative Core for Cancer Bioinformatics are bringing AI and machine learning techniques to cancer research in a uniquely Purdue way.
