Anguraj Sadanandam Institute of Cancer Research, UK

Dr Sadanandam obtained his PhD in Pathology and Microbiology with specialty in Bioinformatics from the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska under Prof. Rakesh K. Singh, where he combined both wet-lab and bioinformatics to identify and characterize metastatic biomarkers in pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDA).

As a postdoctoral fellow with Prof Joe Gray at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL, for about 2 years), he developed PDA subtypes with prognostic and predictive significance (co-first author, Nature Medicine, 2011). In addition, he reclassified breast cancer cell lines into subtypes that match the existing patient tumour subtypes and predicted gene expression subtype- and DNA copy number change-specific therapy by screening 77 different approved and experimental therapeutic compounds (co-first author, PNAS, 2012).

Dr Sadanandam further continued his postdoctoral fellowship (for less than 2 years) under the mentorship of Prof Douglas Hanahan at the Swiss Federal Institute of Lausanne (EPFL) and co-mentorship of Prof Joe Gray. Later, he joined Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB), Lausanne as a Senior Research Scientist in Dr Olivier Michielin group, however, continued his collaboration as a Guest Scientist in Prof. Douglas Hanahan lab at EPFL. During these positions, he identified novel subtypes and correlated them to therapeutic responses using genetically engineered mouse (GEM) and transplanted mouse models by performing preclinical therapeutic trial design especially for colorectal cancer (CRC; Nature Medicine 2013) and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PNETs; publication in press). He also identified fusion genes and currently characterizing their functions in breast cancer cell lines.

Dr Sadanandam joined the ICR in September 2013 as a Team Leader and currently applying his multidisciplinary skills to integrated science of systems biology to identify and test precise therapies for different subtypes of cancers using wet-lab and bioinformatics. His lab develops statistical tools for data integration for molecular and metabolic profiles. His lab showed that multiple epithelial organ-type tumours have consensus subtypes with therapeutic significance using tissue-independent gene expression profiles (different from TCGA pan-cancer subtypes).

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