Aurora (Rory) Blucher, Phd Email & Phone Number

Salt Lake County, Utah, United States

Salt Lake City, Utah, United States

Salt Lake City, Utah, United States

Portland, Oregon Area

The Cancer Targetome and Its Application to A Pathway Perspective on Targeted Therapy Response in Acute Myeloid LeukemiaMy dissertation work characterized drug-target interactions for FDA-approved cancer drugs and integrated this information into pathway models for describing patient-specific drug response in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Given the uncertainty inherent in drug-target interaction information, I developed the Cancer Targetome evidence framework for tiering supporting… Show more The Cancer Targetome and Its Application to A Pathway Perspective on Targeted Therapy Response in Acute Myeloid LeukemiaMy dissertation work characterized drug-target interactions for FDA-approved cancer drugs and integrated this information into pathway models for describing patient-specific drug response in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Given the uncertainty inherent in drug-target interaction information, I developed the Cancer Targetome evidence framework for tiering supporting evidence of drug-target interactions. This allowed for prioritization of drug-target interactions in accordance to strength of evidence and enabled quick triage of patient 'omics alterations with respect to candidate therapeutic vulnerabilities. Furthermore, using a probabilistic graphical modeling approach, I integrated functional mutation calls for AML patient biopsies with quantitative drug-target information from the Cancer Targetome into a pathway-based modeling framework. This systems approach provided a view of patient tumors that highlighted pathways expected to be jointly highly impacted in tumors and most likely to be druggable. The long term goal of this work is to enable selection and validation of targeted therapies for patients. Show less

Doctor Of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bioinformatics And Computational Biology

Bachelor’S Degree, Mathematics