Sungkyunkwan University · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Professor Joo Sang Lee's research lab specializes in computational and translational cancer biology, focusing on identifying key biological variables that govern response to immune checkpoint inhibitors across diverse tumor types. The lab develops data-driven computational frameworks—such as ISLE (Identification of Clinically Relevant Synthetic Lethality)—to prioritize promising synthetic lethal interactions with high translational potential from large-scale 'omics' and drug response datasets. By integrating multi-omics data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and validating predictions through experimental screening and preclinical models, the lab aims to uncover context-specific therapeutic vulnerabilities in cancer. Their work bridges systems biology, precision oncology, and drug discovery to accelerate the development of effective, personalized cancer therapies.
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
That we know of, this is the first systematic evaluation of the different variables associated with anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapy response across different tumor types. The findings suggest that the 3 key variables can explain most of the observed cross-cancer response variability, but their relative explanatory roles may vary in specific cancer types.
While synthetic lethality (SL) holds promise in developing effective cancer therapies, SL candidates found via experimental screens often have limited translational value. Here we present a data-driven approach, ISLE (identification of clinically relevant synthetic lethality), that mines TCGA cohort to identify the most likely clinically relevant SL interactions (cSLi) from a given candidate set of lab-screened SLi. We first validate ISLE via a benchmark of large-scale drug response screens and
Funded by the Samsung Research Funding & Incubation Center of Samsung Electronics, the Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP) grant funded by the Republic of Korea government (MSIT), the Kwanjeong Educational Foundation, the Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Cancer Institute (NCI), and Center for Cancer Research (CCR).
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