Research summary
What causes cancer to develop and progress? As Canada Research Chair in Integrative Causality Inference of Cancer Mechanisms, Dr. Yongjin Park is trying to find answers to this question by applying genetic analysis and single-cell genomics techniques.
He and his research team are taking a causal machine learning approach to characterize cancer-causing cellular contexts. They are also refining multi-gene (polygenic) risk prediction models to improve the ability to detect cancer early and predict how it will progress. They believe that a causal inference approach in single-cell genomics—enabled by statistical genetics, regulatory genomics, and Bayesian machine learning—holds considerable potential for precision health. Ultimately, their research will enable data-driven cancer diagnoses and suggest potential new drug targets and treatments.