Bioinformatics / Theoretical Cytogenetics and Oncogenomics

The focus of my research at the University of Zurich is the analysis of structural variations in cancer genomes by computational genomics, including bioinformatics and systems biology methods. My work centers around our collection of genomic tumor data, assembled from copy number screening experiments in cancer e.g. from Comparative Cytogenetic Hybridization (CGH) studies. Specific projects deal with the development of computational methods for structural data analysis, genomic aberration analysis in specific tumor entities as well as large scale exploration of imbalance patterns in malignancies.

Recently, my has published a resource aimed at collection, re-analysis and probe-level visualization of oncogenomic array data. This "arrayMap" resource can be accessed at www.arraymap.org.

In December 2000 I launched the Progenetix project, a reference database of (molecular-) cytogenetic aberration data in human malignancies. The data is represented in formats suitable to data mining approaches. Various data analysis and visualization tools were developed for the Progenetix project and are accessible through the website. Currently, the Progenetix database contains results from more than 29000 genomic profiling experiments using chromosomal and array based CGH techniques. Additionally, the website is a comprehensive publication tracker for oncogenomic data from array CGH, chromosomal CGH and metaphase analysis studies.

Aside from general CNA data collection and software development, my group is involved in cancer type specific analysis projects. These studies are usually collaborative projects, with a current focus on childhood brain tumors and and malignant lymphomas.