The Cancer Genetics & Bioinformatics Lab at LIIGH UNAM

A bit of a blurry picture of the CG&Bio lab + friends at the Christmas dinner

2018 was a great year for the CG&Bio lab! Overall, we:

-Celebrated the graduation of our first BSc student (Congratulations, Isaac!)
-Were joined by Diego, Paty, Estef and Kevin, who have been working on both computational and wet lab projects. Welcome!
-Published 7 papers/reviews/preprints either directed by our lab or in collaboration.
-Obtained one Fellowship (Newton Advanced Fellowship from the Academy of Medical Sciences, UK), two novel grant awards (Medical Research Council [UK] and UC Mexus [US/Mexico]), one Scholar Award (William Guy Forbeck Research Foundation, USA) and the renovation of our University grant (PAPIIT UNAM)
-Established novel national and international collaborations
-Gave several talks at both national and international events and attended international courses

Here’s to a successful and happy 2019. Bring it on!

The Forbeck Research Foundation was established in honour of 11-year-old Billy Forbeck, who sadly passed away from neuroblastoma in 1984. Every year, the Foundation organises a Forum to exchange ideas to further progress in the fight against cancer. The Annual Forum is held in an intimate venue where ~20 scientists and clinicians from around the world discuss unpublished work and seek opportunities for interaction – which has resulted in highly productive interdisciplinary collaborations. This year, the topic is Cancer Predisposition.

Each year the Foundation selects four young investigators from around the world as Forbeck Scholars to attend the Annual Forum in their year of election and four subsequent Scholar Retreats which offers the opportunity to set up collaborations, meet with experts from different areas of cancer research and discuss novel ideas. This year, Daniela has been selected as a Forbeck Scholar and will attend the Annual Forum in Lake Geneva, WI in November.

This news is very exciting as it will offer an opportunity to discuss the lab’s work in depth with other clinicians and scientists from around the world.

About the William Guy Forbeck Research Foundation: https://www.wgfrf.org/
About the Scholar Award: https://www.wgfrf.org/scholar-award/
Past winners: https://www.wgfrf.org/scholars

Last Friday, Isaac successfully defended his B.Sc. thesis (with honours!), entitled “Functional in silico analysis of SNPs influencing melanoma development and telomere length”. In it, he deploys a series of computational analyses (including genotype imputation, linkage disequilibrium calculations, epigenome state imputation and other functional predictions) in order to prioritise candidate variants underlying increased melanoma risk and telomere length. Based on his work, we are now planning some exciting experiments to test these functional hypotheses.

Congratulations on great work, Isaac, and looking forward to seeing all your future scientific contributions!

It’s been quiet lately at the CG&Bio Lab as students work on their projects and write their theses and postdocs and PI write grants… but these past weeks we’ve been busy so here’s an update: We have presented a poster at the 9th World Melanoma Congress / Society for Melanoma Research Meeting in Brisbane, Australia, and we won a Travel Award! We’ve also had good news in terms of funding: We’ve been awarded a Research Stimulus Grant from the Miguel Alemán Trust, based in Mexico, and we’ve had our application for project funding to the National University approved for the next year. We’re very grateful to these organisations as their support will allow us to continue studying the genetic causes of melanoma.