Yang Li, PhD, assistant professor of neurosurgery and of genetics, has been awarded a grant from St. Baldrick’s Foundation to study pediatric cancers.
The foundation’s mission is to improve research on cancer treatments and quality of life for children after treatment ends.
Li was awarded the St. Baldrick’s Foundation Scholar Grant, which provides $234,000 for his project to study disruptions in gene activity that may underlie diffuse midline glioma. This is a deadly childhood brain tumor with no curative treatment options.
A significant gap in the research of this field is the limited investigation of genetic and epigenetic dysregulation at single-cell resolution, which hampers the identification of potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets in casual cell types and/or states. Li’s investigation will apply advanced artificial intelligence tools, combined with cutting-edge single-cell sequencing techniques, to find the roots of cellular dysfunction that increase the risk for this cancer with finer resolution.