Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology
Giovanni Parmigiani, Ph.D, Chair
The Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology conducts basic research in statistical and computational methods for clinical trials, population-based studies, and cancer biology.
The department also participates extensively in interdisciplinary research in each of these areas with teams of investigators, providing expert consultation on the experimental design and analysis of clinical, laboratory, and population-based studies.
Faculty and staff statisticians in the department play central roles in the development of all clinical research protocols at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC) and serve as members of the Scientific Review Committees and the Institutional Review Boards.
Statisticians in the department prepare or review the statistical designs and analysis plans for all clinical protocols conducted at Dana-Farber and DF/HCC through membership in the disease programs, the DF/HCC Scientific Review Committees, and the Institutional Review Board.
Along with statisticians, bioinformaticians, and epidemiologists at other Harvard schools and teaching hospitals, members of the department direct core statistical resources for the Cancer Center Support Grant, Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) grants, and many program project grants. In addition to clinical studies, this collaborative research includes work in population-based studies through Dana-Farber's Center for Population-Based Research and studies in the biology of cancer through the Center for Cancer Systems Biology and the Center for Cancer Genome Discovery.
In the area of computational biology, John Quackenbush and his group have been making great progress in applying computational methods to the analysis of biomedical research data. Joseph White partnered with Edie Weller to create an integrated data warehouse bringing together clinical and research data in multiple myeloma that has accelerated research into this difficult-to-treat form of cancer.
Together with members of the Department of Cancer Biology, Quackenbush was awarded one of nine Centers for Excellence in Genomic Science to study how cancer-causing viruses alter cellular networks. Aedin Culhane was awarded Breast Cancer SPORE Awards to study breast cancer stem cells and to investigate evolutionary relationships between breast cancer genes. The Computational Biology group is also working on a large-scale genomic studies of ovarian cancer focused on understanding the problem of platinum resistance.
To make the resources they have developed more widely available to other investigators at Dana-Farber and beyond, Quackenbush and his colleagues recently opened the Center for Cancer Computational Biology (CCCB). Part of the Dana-Farber strategic plan, the CCCB provides access to cutting-edge research software and tools and provides hands-on consulting support to investigators needing assistance in the analysis of genomic data.
Members of the department have built widely used software systems for computational biology, including DNA-Chip Analyzer, or dChip (Cheng Li, PhD), and have made contributions to understanding the genetic basis of cancer. Quackenbush continues his biological research into the genomics of cancer and other diseases and has extended his software systems, including TM4 and the Gene Index Database.
Several of the department's collaborative projects extend beyond DFCI. The department serves as the Statistical Center for the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG), the International Breast Cancer Study Group (IBCSG), the Cancer Care Outcomes Research and Surveillance Consortium (CanCORS), and the Lunenburg Lymphoma Biomarker Consortium (LLBC).
During 2008, department members authored or coauthored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications. These articles appeared in a range of journals in cancer research, biostatistics, and bioinformatics, including the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of the American Medical Association, Blood, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Cancer, Biometrics, and Bioinformatics.
In addition to its research, the department continues its close partnership with the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard School of Public Health, where the majority of our faculty hold primary academic appointments, teach in the degree programs, and direct doctoral students. During the past two years, members of our faculty have chaired major academic committees, such as the Curriculum, Degree Program, and Doctoral Qualifying Examination committees, and also have become involved with undergraduate teaching in the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
