Engineering Newsletter

Dana Pe'er | Computer Science

The closer one looks, the more varied and complicated cancer becomes. There is no longer talk of finding a "silver bullet" that will cure all cancers, but there very well may be a way of dealing with the disease on an individual basis despite its many forms.

Dana Pe'er, assistant professor working in the Departments of Computer Science and Biological Sciences, is combining modern molecular biology with techniques emerging from engineering and computer science, along with advances in machine learning, to analyze the many terabytes of raw data being generated by such modern biotechnologies as high-density microarrays and revolutionary gene sequencing techniques.

A few of the questions Pe'er is focusing on include the way cells process information, how this differs slightly from person to person, and what happens when the process goes awry.

"Our cells are essentially little computers that sense environment to compute and execute a response," said Pe'er.

In particular, Pe'er and her colleagues are trying to relate small changes in the way cells process information to large changes that can result, such as cancer or autoimmune disease. They are also using their insights to determine where and how to intervene in a cancer cell's processes to kill it without damaging healthy cells in an effort to help develop treatments tailored to each individual cancer. From this comes the hope that one day each person's cancer will be met with a personalized cure.

Pe'er earned her PhD in computer science and computational biology before completing post-doctoral research at Harvard Medical School, where she pioneered the use of Bayesian methods in biological research. In 2006, she moved to SEAS and recently succeeded in using her understanding of cellular processes to identify new genetic causes of cancer.