Millions of cells are dividing every minute in our human body. Normally, this process is well coordinated and cell divisions are followed by ordered patterning and cell specialization, allowing the maintenance of tissues and organs internal equilibrium (homeostasis). Cancer can be regarded as a deviation from this balanced behavior: a single cell, that has undergone mutations in its DNA, instead of maturing and dying normally reproduces without restraint. This is usually accomplished by incessant rather than faster dividing and it gives rise to a progeny that usually fails to mature. In this perspective it is clear that cancer is a very complex disease, involving not only cancerous cells, but also surrounding and distant normal cells, which engage an infinite number of complex interactions. Thus the effort of unraveling such a complexity by using genomic approaches is the focus of my laboratory. 

Medicine is transitioning from treating the “average patient” to seeking to treat each individual in a tailored way. At present, this approach to medicine, however, can only be delivered at lead academic institutions, hence the opportunity to deliver state of the art clinical care on a large scale and in the community is still missed. By integrating big molecular data, standard clinical laboratory measurements, and digital pathology images, my laboratory strive to bridge this gap. The goal here is to develop robust, parsimonious models that can forecast patients molecular make-up (e.g., their mutational profiles) and outcome (e.g., their response to targeted treatments). While the development of these approaches can only be achieved in leading academic institutions, deploying and disseminating such methods in community and rural hospitals nationwide is of paramount importance. Ultimately, through research in this domain, my lab fosters the democratization of precision and personalized medicine.