Supervisor: Dr. Maxime Tarabichi
PhD thesis in Computational Biology – Cancer and Somatic Genome Evolution lab
Description: Thyroid diseases are widespread and their treatment represents a substantial market. Impressively, more than 2 out of 3 people have a thyroid nodule, that is a small thyroid tumour, across age groups. Predicting which nodule will lead to cancer remains a major challenge, and there is currently an overtreatment problem, leading to adverse health and economical effects. Recent technologies have allowed us to look at the genetic and phenotypic evolution of normal human tissues down to the cellular level, and are currently redefining our understanding of tissue microanatomy and diseases, especially cancer. However, so far, the somatic evolution of the thyroid and its impact on the cell type and cell state composition across sex/age groups and disease states have not been assessed. In this bioinformatics project, the candidate will help us comprehensively characterise the somatic evolution of the human normal thyroid down to the single-cell level across thyroid nodules, cancer-like tumours and papillary thyroid cancers. We will leverage whole-genome sequenced laser microdissections to study the clonal composition of the follicles and solid cell nests, the main anatomical and functional subunits. We will also paint the landscape of cell types and cell states with single-nuclei multiomics and identify the underlying regulatory networks. Finally, we will integrate these molecular layers to propose clinical predictors of cancer risk.
Expected profile: Master’s in Bioinformatics, Mathematics, Physics, Computer Sciences, or related field, with experience in programming (R/python).
Personal development and expertise: The candidate will be followed by a thesis advisory committee and have learning opportunities at the ULB. They will develop expertise in cancer genomics, multiomics data analysis and machine learning.
Environment: Based at the IRIBHM on the Erasmus Campus, the candidate will interact with our collaborators in Houston, Cambridge and Ghent, and our master students, PhD students and postdocs from the lab, as well as from the bioinformatics lab of Prof. Vincent Detours, with expertise in thyroid cancer, AI, transcriptomics and genomics, with whom we have shared lab meetings.