Projects Page - Bioinformatics Group IRCCS of Bari

1. Structural Bioinformatics

This project aims at elucidating the role of some missense variations in the BRCT domain of BRCA1 gene. The variations under investigation have been identified during a screening experiment carried out in the framework of the activities of the Molecular Biology Group directed by Dr. Stefania Tommasi. As it has been observed by studies previously carried out, these variation seem to be associated with poor prognosis in breast cancer patients. For this reason this research is intended to build a compuational model to predict of the clinical importance of missense variation given the spatial modification it implies at the molecular level.

2. Data Mining in Bioinformatics

In the framework of this project the group is expected to design and develop data analysis methods for the extraction of biomedical knowledge from high-throughoput experiments. The high density of novel platforms for the investigation of biological processes relating cancer poses new challenges in the field of extraction of useful clinical information from such databases. In this context, the activity of the research group is thought to give answers to questions that rise from experimental field. The approaches selected to face similar issues range from PCA-Artificial Neural Networks to hybrid protocols based on the most advanced data mining systems based on Artificial Immune Systems and Gene Expression Programming.

In particular the fields of application for the developed algorithms have been identified in:

Gene Expression Levels profiling in female breast cancer patients (case set: 200 BC patients platform: Affymetrix HG-U133A);
Copy Number Levels profiling in female BRCAx breast cancer patients (case set: 124 BC patients platform: BAC custom array);
Copy Number Levels profiling in male BRCAx breast cancer patients (case set: 22 BC patients platform: Agilent 44K)

The main goal of this project is to find coherent models for carcinogenesis and temporal evolution of chromosomal instability regions in breast cancer.

3. Applied Biostatistics

The Bioinformatics Research Group is currently supporting the activities of Biomorphology and Molecular Biology divisions of the Clinical and Experimental Oncology Laboratory. The major role of the group in this project consists in the development of hybrid statistical systems that are used in common routine of the other groups in order to assess statistical power of findings.