I am a genomics scientist and an associate research professor of Internal Medicine in the Division of Hematology. My research interests are focused on how changes in DNA and gene expression influence the development of cancer.

As the technical director of the Genomics Shared Resource at The James, I established and lead the Illumina sequencing service line which generates global data for cancer center members and the Ohio State research community. In this capacity, I identify unmet needs and develop global analyses with clinician scientists, lab-based scientists, computation scientists and colleagues in genomics companies with the goal of assessing patient responses to their assigned therapies.

For an assay to be widely accessible and applicable, the protocol must be resource-friendly in terms of patient sample size and data generation cost. At the same time, the resultant data must be sensitive and specific to the patients and their specific treatments. Discussions with colleagues treating patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) led to a pressing research question on why some patients achieve only partial responses, even after several years of treatment. For some of these patients, the amount of circulating residual disease cells is quite low, thereby limiting the options for generating global data.

Using CLL patient white blood cells, we developed a protocol called cell-based limiting cell RNA-seq (lcRNA-seq). To generate robust patient transcriptome data, 50 to 500 viable CLL disease cells are deposited by flow cytometry into a solution that lyses the cells and protects the RNA quality simultaneously. The ultralow nature of this approach necessitates custom analysis to reduce spurious findings from transcripts with low sequencing read coverage. In collaboration with computation collaborators and our shared team members, we developed and published the CLEAR algorithm in 2020. This combination was used in the VAY736Y2102 clinical trial with Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research and participating researchers at five participating institutions.

With collaborators, I have developed lab protocols and associated custom data analysis workflows for: the cell-based limiting cell-RNAseq and associated CLEAR pipeline, PrEMeR-CG for MethylCap-seq DNA methylation data, and FuSpot for viewing gene fusion events. I also contributed to QuaCRS for post-alignment bulk and lcRNA-seq QC, and VDJ analysis in lcRNA-seq data derived from B cells, T cells, NK cells and plasma cells.

I have co-authored more than 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals including Arthritis & Rheumatology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, the Journal of Clinical Investigation and Cancer Research. I have also been honored to receive the National Cancer Institute Research Specialist R50 award.