Location: Bethesda, MD, USA

More information: https://web.cvent.com/event/900ef59c-235f-484b-b10e-93ed2a22690a/summary

May. 12, 2023

dkNET New Investigator Pilot Program in Bioinformatics Awardee Webinar Series

Join dkNET Webinar on Friday, May 19, 2023, 11 am - 12 pm PDT

Abstract 

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is an immune-mediated disease that results in insulin insufficiency and affects 0.3% of the population, including both children and adults. To support clinical trial efforts, there is an urgent need to develop reliable biomarkers capable of predicting T1D risk and guiding therapeutic interventions. Recently, whole blood bulk RNA sequencing has been used to guide T1D clinical trial design and assess response to disease modifying interventions. While the use of bulk RNA sequencing is cost-effective, these datasets provide limited information about cell specific gene expression changes. Here, we aimed to apply computational strategies to deconvolute cell type composition using cell specific gene expression references. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) was conducted to profile peripheral blood mononuclear cells obtained from youth within recent T1D onset and age- and sex-matched controls and identified 31 distinct cell clusters. Using this pre-defined reference dataset, we ran computational algorithms CIBERSORTx and other deconvolution methods simultaneously to deconvolute cell proportions using public clinical trial data. We focused our initial analysis on data from the TN-20 Rituximab trial, which tested the anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody rituximab vs placebo in recent onset T1D. This talk will introduce recent advances of scRNA-seq techniques and computational deconvolution methods and demonstrate that how we apply different deconvolution approaches for secondary analysis of existing clinical trial data, in the purpose of linking cell specific immune signatures associated with drug responder status.

Presenter: Wenting Wu, PhD. Research Assistant Professor, Center for Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases, Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics, Indiana University School of Medicine

More Information: https://dknet.org/about/blog/2623

May. 22-23, 2023

NIDDK Webinar: A Scientific Workshop on Post-Dialysis Fatigue

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will award Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Institutional Research Training Grants (T32) to eligible, domestic institutions to develop and/or enhance predoctoral and postdoctoral research training, including short-term research training, to help ensure that a diverse and highly trained workforce is available to meet the needs of the Nation’s biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research agenda. Research training programs are expected to incorporate engaging, didactic, research, and career development elements to prepare trainees for careers that will have a significant impact on the health-related research needs of the Nation. Programs proposing only short-term predoctoral research training should not apply to this announcement, but rather to the Kirschstein-NRSA Short-Term Institutional Research Training Grant Program (T35) exclusively reserved for predoctoral, short-term research training. This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) does not allow appointed Trainees to lead an independent clinical trial, but does allow them to obtain research experience in a clinical trial led by a mentor or co-mentor.

More information: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/pa-23-048.html

May. 30, 2023