Gilles Thomas Bioinformatics Platform

Main activities

Since 2009, the platform has been actively involved in cancer genomics research programs within the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC[lien http]) that undertook the systematic study of more than 25,000 cancer genomes, from 50 different types, at the genomic, epigenomic and transcriptomic levels. In this context, the platform participated to 3 INCa/INSERM funded programs: HER2-amplified breast cancer, prostate cancer and gynecological carcinosarcoma. It also provided some help and guidance to other French ICGC programs such as retinoblastoma.

During the past ten years, the platform has developped several projects at the national or regional (CRCL) levels and gained a strong expertise in the analysis of transcriptomics (bulk and single cell) and epigenetics data.

The platform also has an expertise in the field of genome-wide associations studies (GWAS) and is in charge of the statistical analyses of two major national Breast Cancer cohorts: CANTO (UniCancer and Labex GenMed partnership) and PHARE/SIGNAL (INCa funded program).

In addition, the platform is leading the bioinformatics developments and analyses in several precision medicine initiatives. It participates, since 2013, to the Lyric ProfiLER collaborative effort with the CLB clinical department to explore the therapeutic impact of molecular profiling (gene panel sequencing) in routine setting for patients.

More recently, in 2017, it was committed to the French national healthcare Plan France Médecine Génomique 2025. The platform is coordinating the bioinformatics operations (with the CHUGA in Grenoble) for the AURAGEN national sequencing platform, generating thousands of Whole Genome Sequences (WGS) per year in a clinical setting for cancer and rare diseases.

Missions

The general mission of the bioinformatics facility is to empower biomedical and research teams working in the field of cancer to fully exploit the data generated through large scale genomic projects. In accordance with this mission, the platform provides:

  • collaborative support in bioinformatics and biostatistics to researchers and clinicians
  • collaborative support to other CLB/CRCL technological platforms
  • research and development of new methods, algorithms or tools
  • access and support to high performance computing
  • state-of-the-art automatic pipelines for data processing and analysis
  • data management and integration with structured databases
  • mentoring of young bioinformaticians from collaborating research teams
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Publications