Home Department: Computer Science
Mentor: Carolyn Lee, Dermatology

“Investigating RAC1-Associated Prognostic Biomarkers for Invasive Melanoma”

Current staging guidelines for melanoma are not sufficient to accurately identify patients at high risk of metastatic recurrence. The signaling protein Rac1 plays a vital role in melanoma metastasis, but the molecular factors that interact with Rac1 are poorly understood. Tomas’s research will use the Rac1 interactome, the whole set of molecular factors that interact with Rac1, to develop a machine learning model that predicts metastasis and identifies potential drug targets. Tomas’s work in the Lee lab will use statistical learning techniques to discover novel drug targets to treat metastatic melanoma and help clinicians better identify high-risk patients for adjuvant therapy.