Computational Biology – Cancers Drug Discovery/Rare Diseases

We have a large and active community science group solving drug discovery for rare diseases and cancer.

We are winners of the Children Tumor Foundation’s 2022 Hack4NF competition. NF1 Drug Targeting by Team MCH. We are now scaling our project up.

In late 2023 we published in Cancers:
Drug Responses in Plexiform Neurofibroma Type I (PNF1) Cell Lines Using High-Throughput Data and Combined Effectiveness and Potency
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38136356/

All backgrounds and skill types are welcome to join our cross-functional working group.

We are working on a new algorithm for cancer drug screening using quantitative High Throughput Screening data (where wells of drugs are tested at various concentrations, and the luminescence of the well relates to cell death).

Getting Started With Our Group

  1. Simply attend our weekly Computational Biology meetings on meetup. We post them on DMV Petri Dish – https://www.meetup.com/petri-dish-bio/ – and MoCo Makers – https://www.meetup.com/mocomakers/
  2. Read our paper – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38136356/
  3. Watch our ‘onboarding’ videos. This really is the BEST way to get spun up with what we are working on. They are quite long, but will save the organizer a ton of time – as we will have to restate common questions:
    1. NF1 Biology and Foundations – Computational Biology – Part 1  – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClPPDk2U7mg
    2. Historical Work on delta S – Computational Biology – Part 2 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoCUE89MpYk
    3. delta S’ and Future Work – Computational Biology – Part 3 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aQCKOEZRU8

Please be aware that we use the following tools:

  • A Slack channel is our main communication platform (request access from matt@mocomakers.com)
  • We post all public events on meetup (see links above)
  • All code is on GitHub – right now the main tool is: https://github.com/MoCoMakers/nf_streamlit – which publishes to https://nf.mocomakers.com  (depending on the day, this tool might be working well or down – fell free to message if the tool is down)
  • Our data is available on our Google Drive (request access from matt@mocomakers.com)

If you can, please review the paper prior to attending – and ideally the videos. We need:

  • Mathematicians/Statisticians
  • Biologists
  • Python developers
  • Anybody able to contribute to a scientific evaluation a biomedical assessment

Please join this discussion and help support research for a rare genetic disease and cancers in general.