Tool development for multi-omic data integration

Pathology plays a major role in determining the treatment that a cancer patient will receive. Over the past years, single-cell analyses are revealing tumors as complex cellular mixtures, for which the next challenge is focused on investigating how all these cells interact in specific microenvironments. Novel technology platforms, including multiplexed IHC (mIHC) and spatial transcriptomics, are rendering such high-dimensional analysis possible, but data analysis tools are still largely missing. In this project, first, computational tools to maximally extract single-cell data from mIHC and spatial transcriptomics will be developed, following which both data types will be integrated using a variety of data fusion approaches. This will be done using available and novel data sets on various cancer types for which such information has been and will be collected.