Abstract: Cancer is a global health issue with a mortality rate that is expected to rise by about 70% over the next 2 decades (World Health Organization). Despite the significant breakthroughs in its understanding, prevention, and treatment, cancer’s complexity slows the quest for its cure. The advent of high-throughput technologies has provided the possibility to gather a comprehensive molecular picture of this disease by allowing the detailed characterization of thousands of tumors at multiple molecular levels (“multi-omics”). The current main challenge is to translate this wealth of information into actionable knowledge about the pathogenesis of this disease.

In this talk I will give three examples of how the integration of multiple omics data can reveal new insights about cancer. First, I will show that combining microRNA and mRNA expression data we can identify new regulatory mechanisms underlying colorectal cancer subtypes. Second, I will prove that multiplex networks, a trending topic in network theory, are very well suited for the joint integration of multi-omics data. Third, I will show that by combining the results of matrix factorization across 14 independent transcriptomic datasets we can reconstruct the landscape of those pathways involved in the different subtypes of colorectal cancer.

Venue: Sala d’actes de la FiB (Campus Nord)

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