cancer

New report: My Cancer & AI

A report on a patient engagement workshop series on what cancer patients think about artificial intelligence is now available. The workshop series was developed in partnership with Ovarian Cancer Action (OCA) as part of my Turing AI Fellowship. I am grateful to patients and OCA for their support in developing this work and its impact on my future research plans. The report is available to download from here.

CIDER: an interpretable meta-clustering framework for single-cell RNA-seq data integration and evaluation

Our latest paper, based on the thesis work of former DPhil student Zhiyuan, has been published in Genome Biology. CIDER: an interpretable meta-clustering framework for single-cell RNA-seq data integration and evaluation describes a meta-clustering workflow based on inter-group similarity measures. We demonstrate that CIDER outperforms other scRNA-Seq clustering methods and integration approaches in both simulated and real datasets. Moreover, we show that CIDER can be used to assess the biological correctness of integration in real datasets, while it does not require the existence of prior cellular annotations.

Rarity: Discovering rare cell populations from single-cell imaging data

Kaspar Martens will present his latest work at the NeurIPS Workshop “Learning Meaningful Representations of Life” Rarity: Discovering rare cell populations from single-cell imaging data. The work arises from his Turing-Crick Biomedical Award which supports a collaboration between the Alan Turing Institute and the Ciccarelli Group at Kings College London and the Francis Crick Institute.

Yau receives award for ovarian cancer research

The Columbia Hospital For Women Research Foundation have awarded Christopher Yau the prize for most impactful paper in 2020 in the field of obstetrical and gynecologic and breast disease. The prize consisted of a $5,000 to a charity of Chris and Ahmed’s choosing and they selected Ovarian Cancer Action who co-funded the original work. The paper “The Repertoire of Serous Ovarian Cancer Non-genetic Heterogeneity Revealed by Single-Cell Sequencing of Normal Fallopian Tube Epithelial Cells.

Artificial Intelligence Webinar - Ovarian Cancer Action UK

Recently Christopher Yau worked with Ovarian Cancer Action UK to put together a webinar on his research for patients and the public. You can find the video on Youtube: “What is artificial intelligence and what does it mean for cancer research?”.

New study in JCI Insights

Our paper “Adipocyte-like signature in ovarian cancer minimal residual disease identifies metabolic vulnerabilities of tumor-initiating cells” with the Oxford Ovarian Cancer Cell Lab has been featured on the cover of JCI Insight. The work used methods developed by former group student Kieran Campbell.

New study in Clinical Cancer Research

With collaborators in the Oxford Ovarian Cancer Lab and Imperial College London, Zhiyuan Hu has identified that OxC-defined EMT-high SOCs carry particularly poor prognosis independent of established clinical parameters. She found these tumours are associated with high frequency of immunosuppressive macrophages, suggesting a potential therapeutic target to improve clinical outcome. Link to paper

Turing AI Acceleration Fellowship

Christopher Yau has been awarded a 5-year Turing AI Acceleration Fellowship. The Turing AI Acceleration Fellowships are part of the government’s AI sector deal investment in Turing AI fellowships, recommended by the independent 2017 UK AI Review, whose report ‘Growing the artificial intelligence industry in the UK,’ was co-authored by Reguis Professor of Computer Science at Southampton, Dame Wendy Hall, and Jérôme Pesenti, now Vice President of AI at Facebook.

Scientists closer to finding the cell of origin for ovarian cancer

Former DPhil student Zhiyuan with the Ovarian Cancer Lab have created a new public engagement video showcasing our work on single cell sequencing of ovarian cancer. Scientists closer to finding the cell of origin for ovarian cancer

Cancer Cell Publication

Congratulations to Zhiyuan Hu whose paper on the “The Repertoire of Serous Ovarian Cancer Non-genetic Heterogeneity Revealed by Single-Cell Sequencing of Normal Fallopian Tube Epithelial Cells” has been published in Cancer Cell. Read press coverage by the Daily Mail and the press release by the main funders Ovarian Cancer Action.