Research line

Modern technologies allow to study the distinct aspects involved in tumor progression from different angles, such as in vivo and ex vivo time-lapse imaging (e.g. intravital microscopy) for tumor cell invasion studies; multiplexed imaging for TME characterization or sc transcriptomics to quantitively dissect tumor heterogeneity and complexity. Separately each of these single omic approaches can mainly reflect one aspect of tumor biology, thus computational integrative approaches are necessary to acquire systematic understanding of how these different aspects interact define predictive paths to invasion and provide workflows to bridge phenotypic, molecular and contextual networks driving this process. To identify tumor intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of tumor invasion in this research line we develop a computational framework for multi-omic integration of three complementary layers: tumor cell dynamics; TME and tumor transcriptome. With this framework we aim to get a better understanding on the biology of Diffuse Midline Glioma, an invasive pediatric brain tumor with a very dire prognosis.