About the Zhou Lab
Innovations in next generation sequencing and ‘big data’ acquisition have created a robust set of genomic data ripe for interrogation and analysis. The complexities and noisiness of this data present unique challenges to users at the bench or in the clinic. Our lab is interested in pioneering data visualization platforms that facilitate access to genomic information and support analysis by a broad audience of users. Ultimately, the tools we create bolster research efforts and reveal clues to understanding the etiology, progression, and treatment of catastrophic childhood diseases.
Our research summary
Working in close collaboration with investigators and clinicians, our team creates interactive software solutions to facilitate access and support analysis of complex genomic information. Our innovations allow a user to call up a gene or locus of interest and field the information for that target with respect to all other annotations and details. We work primarily with the Departments of Oncology and Epidemiology & Cancer Control to build platforms using patient cohort and survivor cohort data. In addition to genetic information, our platforms embed data related to molecular signature, histopathology, clinical outcomes, and patient demographics.
- ProteinPaint: A web service for simultaneously visualizing genetic lesions and RNA expression in pediatric cancers
- GenomePaint: A web service to visualize somatic coding and noncoding alterations in pediatric cancers, along with multi-omics information to reveal noncoding alterations, enhancer hijacking, splicing aberrations, mutational signatures, and survival analysis
- Survivorship Portal: Developed in collaboration with investigators from Epidemiology and Cancer Control, the portal shares high quality genomic, clinical and patient-reported data from survivors of pediatric cancer from SJLIFE and CCSS studies.
Our hybrid team of PhD scientists and web developers is uniquely suited to address and optimize the impactful questions of basic and clinical investigators. We conduct extensive architecture analysis and data interrogation to ensure our inputs and algorithms are accurate and robust. In addition to our current solutions, we are exploring new opportunities with collaborators in Neuro-Oncology and Hematology – creating resources to better understand, and treat, brain tumors and sickle cell disease.
We are looking to build our development team and are particularly interested in candidates with a background in the biological sciences and a passion for creating software to lower the data access barrier and promote cancer and biomedical research.
Selected Publications
Contact us
Xin Zhou, PhD
Assistant Member, Computational Biology
Department of Computational Biology
MS 1135, Room IA6034
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Memphis, TN, 38105-3678 USA GET DIRECTIONS