Dr Claude Chelala
Research Interests
Dr Claude Chelala's main research themes are in: Bioinformatics, Breast Cancer, Cancer Genomics and Pancreatic Cancer
My research interests lie in the area of computational and integrative bioinformatics. An important aspect of my work involves designing and setting up a generic model for the organisation, integration and mining of complex –omics data sets. This model was successfully applied to pancreatic cancer and could be extended to other malignant and non-malignant diseases where complex datasets are available. It is currently being used to set up the bioinformatics Infrastructure of the Breast Cancer Campaign Tissue Bank (BCCTB). This will be unique in providing an integrative bioinformatics model with a back-end Tissue Bank resource.
I am also interested in the study of genetic variations and have designed and implemented SNPnexus as a dedicated resource allowing scientists to functionally annotate newly discovered or public domain SNPs. SNPnexus is a unique and timely tool since it is the only tool currently available for the functional annotation of newly detected SNPs from sequencing data. It offers a better understanding and interpretation of the functional role of variations in the sequenced genomes for an improved targeting of genetic modifications to specific genes or areas of genomes.
In addition, my computational work covers large-scale analysis of common/specific alteration signatures in human cancers in order to identify cancer-causing genes, -related molecular pathways as well as new biomarkers for novel diagnostics or screening in cancer.
Profile
I was awarded a PhD in Radiation Biology from Paris-Sud University and a degree in Structural Bioinformatics from Paris Descartes University. My first post-doctoral experience at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) involved the development of novel tools to gather information for automated analysis of genome maps and distribution study of the disease-related genes. Afterwards, I joined the Pasteur Institute to work on large-scale analysis of genetic variation, integration with clinical data and the association with type 1 diabetes. I worked on developing tools to transfer, integrate and analyse the genetic, genomic and proteomic data. My later studies have centred on cancer research. Funded by Cancer Research UK, I joined Barts Cancer Institute as a Lecturer and Principal Investigator in Bioinformatics. Research in this environment is very collaborative and my group interacts with clinical and basic scientists at the Barts & The London School of Medicine and its affiliated Barts Cancer Institute.
Funding
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) PhD studentship 2010-2013 £30,000 "A multidisciplinary computational approach to model cancer omics data" (Supervisor with Prof N Lemoine)
- Cancer Research UK Programme Grant 2010-2015 £1,200,00;"Molecular pathology and genomics of pancreatic cancer (Bioinformatics Lead, co-Investigator with Dr T Crnogorac-Jurcevic; PI Prof N Lemoine)
- Breast Cancer Campaign Programme Grant 2009-2014 £2,245,537 "Breast Cancer Campaign Breast Tissue Bank"
(Bioinformatics Lead, co-Investigator with Prof AM Hanby, Dr L Jordan, Dr C Purdie, Prof IO Ellis, Mr P Quinlan, and Dr AR Green; PI Prof L Jones and Dr V Speirs)
Key Publications
Gadaleta E, Cutts RJ, Kelly GP, Crnogorac-Jurcevic T, Hemant M. Kocher, Lemoine NR, Chelala C. A global insight into a cancer transcriptional space using pancreatic data: Importance, Findings and Flaws. Nucleic Acids Research 2011. 1;39(18):7900-7. PMID:21724610
Cutts RJ, Gadaleta E, Hahn SA, Crnogorac-Jurcevic T, Lemoine NR, Chelala C (2011) The Pancreatic Expression database: 2011 update. Nucleic Acids Research. 39(Database issue):D1023-8. PMID: 20959292
Gadaleta E, Lemoine NR, Chelala C (2011) Online resources of cancer data: barriers, benefits and lessons. Briefings in Bioinformatics. 12(1): 52-63. PMID: 20348133
Chelala C, Khan A and Lemoine NR (2009) SNPnexus: A web database for functional annotation of newly discovered and public domain Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms. Bioinformatics 25(5):655-61. PMID: 19098027
Further Publications
For additional publications, please click here.
Research Group
- Dr Rosalind Cutts, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
- Dr Jun Wang, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
- Dr Ajanthah Sangaralingam, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
- Dr Dayem Ullah, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
- Dr Syed Haider, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
- Mr Jacek Marzec, Bioinformatician
- Miss Emanuela Gadaleta, PhD student
External Activities
- Editorial Board: Journal of Pathology
- Visiting Associate Professor, American University of Beirut, Lebanon.
