The Big Picture

A typical cancer tumor at diagnosis is highly heterogeneous at the genetic level, containing several distinct cell subpopulations called sub-clones. The presence of these sub-clones is referred to as intra-tumor heterogeneity (ITH), and it is a major reason for treatment failure and subsequent relapse. Little is known about the phenotypic differences between the sub-clones, if any. Investigating the molecular phenotype of cancer sub-clones could potentially give us a deeper understanding of ITH, and possibly allow us to identify gene expression changes that drive the tumor formation. In order to achieve these goals, I use statistical and computational techniques on next-generation sequencing data from dissected tumors of ovarian cancer patients. I hope that my work will generate hypotheses for cancer researchers that are investigating new therapeutic strategies.