Talk: Forecasting Tumor-Immune Dynamics in Pancreatic Cancer

Abstract: This talk presents a hybrid computational and experimental strategy to uncover interactions between neoplastic cells and the microenvironment during pancreatic carcinogenesis and immunotherapy response. Pancreatic cancers are notoriously immunosuppressive, with immunosuppression developing with the cancer and requiring combination treatment strategies to sensitize their microenvironment to immune checkpoint inhibitors at the late stage at which they are diagnosed. New single-cell and spatial molecular profiling technologies enable unprecedented characterization of the cellular and molecular composition of the microenvironment. These technologies provide the potential to identify signaling between immune cells, including immune aggregates, and the microenvironment. Further combining these data-driven spatial multi-omics analyses with first-principles, mechanistic mathematical modeling provides a forecast system that can yield computational predictions to model emergent cell behaviors and response to therapeutic selection. This mathematical forecast system will empower a new predictive oncology paradigm, leveraging computational systems to predict the impact of tumor-TME interactions.

About the Speaker: Dr. Fertig seeks to advance a new predictive medicine paradigm for oncology by converging systems biology with multi-omics technology development. Dr. Fertig’s transdisciplinary expertise enables her to lead large-scale, team-science projects, adapting cutting-edge molecular profiling technologies to human biospecimen research and clinical trials to uncover new therapeutic interception pathways. Beyond the lab, she is a recognized leader in developing new training paradigms that converge oncologists, pathologists, basic biologists, computational investigators, and engineers to advance the next generation of computationally-driven cancer research.