The Getz lab is focused on cancer genome analysis, which includes (i) somatic events that cause cancer or lead to development of resistance, (ii) germline events that increase the risk for getting cancer, and (iii) using these events to identify subtypes of the disease and their relationship to clinical parameters and/or treatment outcomes. The team is building tools that are part of a robust analytical pipeline to analyze data coming from various national/international collaborative cancer genome projects, and these tools are revolutionizing how we analyze cancer genomes and use them in clinical settings.
Cancer genome analysis in the Getz lab includes two major steps: (i) Characterization – cataloging of all genomic events and the mechanisms that created them during the clonal evolution of the cancer, comparing events at the DNA, RNA and protein levels between tumor and normal samples from an individual patient; and (ii) Interpretation – analysis of the characterization data across a cohort of patients with the aim of identifying the alterations in genes and pathways that cause cancer or increase its risk as well as identifying molecular subtypes of the disease, their markers, and relationship to clinical variables.