Shared Resource 01: Biomedical Informatics (BISR)

Ohio State University, Columbus OH

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY – BIOINFORMATICS SHARED RESOURCE (BISR) The BISR is an essential shared resource that supports a wide range of studies with bioinformatics and computational biology needs, ranging from next generation sequencing (NGS) to data management in population science studies. Housed within the Department of BMI, the BISR's goal is to leverage a variety of informatics services, ranging from analysis of omics datasets to patient/participant-centered data instrumentation, access, and management tools and processes. The Specific Aims of the BSR are to: 1) Provide state of the art bioinformatics and computational biology services; and 2) Provide OSUCCC investigators with services, expertise and access to technology platforms in support of heterogeneous and multi-dimensional biomedical data management requirements. Over the current grant cycle, Drs. Kevin Coombes (TT) and Lang Li (CB) assumed leadership of BISR, replacing Drs. Philip Payne and Jeffrey Parvin. During the current funding cycle, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was established for the Department of Biomedical Informatics (BMI) and the OSUCCC to support 5 faculty at 10% per year for 3 years within BISR as they transition to grant funding, on a rolling basis, to provide non-chargeable, cancer focused bioinformatics work for OSUCCC membership and/or cancer focused researchers. Additional major changes for BISR include supporting the enhancement of the Genomics Shared Resource (GSR) to incorporate newly developed shared services with Nationwide Children's Hospital (NCH); and added capabilities to support studies involving data from single-cell sequencing, long-read (third generation) sequencing, metabolomics, and metagenomics. BISR has added five new faculty to support the areas of (1) computational optimization for drug sensitivity prediction (Cheng), (2) proteomics, and functional annotation of DNA non-coding regions (Zhang), (3) metabolomics and metagenomics (Mathe), (4) single-cell sequencing (Ma), and (5) long-read sequencing (Au). BISR supported Biospecimen Services Shared Resource (BSSR) projects (Total Cancer Care [TCC] and the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network [ORIEN]) by establishing a data warehouse of patient records with de-identified data. During the current funding cycle, the BISR supported 115 publications (25 > 10 impact factor), 134 users, and 32 NCI grants including 5 P01s, 2 P50s, 13 R01s, 3 R21s, 1 R50, 2 U01s, 1 U10, 1 UG1, involving members from all five programs. Over the next grant cycle, BISR will enhance services for “integromics”, e.g., the integration of disparate source of both omics and clinical data. BISR will be a critical part of the Immune Monitoring and Discovery Platform (IMDP), an overarching approach for fostering interactions among shared resources for complex immuno-oncology projects. The annual budget of the BISR is $1,122,279, yet the CCSG request is $106,905. As such, the BISR leverages extensive institutional support and seeks only 9.5% support from CCSG funds.