Stochasticity and plasticity in tumor relapse and development

Abstract
How do stochasticity and plasticity play out in tissues? First, I will show how stochastic clonal dynamics of patient-derived colorectal cancer make a case for (almost) all cancer cells to possess a capacity to become drug-tolerant. Glioblastomas, however, can have different behavior. Second, I will make a case for redundancy in fetal lung development using transcriptome analysis. Finally, I will highlight the power of high-dimensional data to provide a strong base for predictive modeling in biology using new data from circulating tumor DNA.

Sidhartha Goyal is a faculty member in the Department of Physics and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. His primary interest lies in developing mathematical and computational frameworks to quantify and uncover the rules governing the structure of large populations of cells (cell-to-cell heterogeneity) and, subsequently, their fate/function, from large microbial populations to stem cell differentiation to tumor progression. Sid earned his PhD in Physics at Princeton and then moved to KITP at UC Santa Barbara for a postdoc. He got his first degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay.