Devall Lab
What drives colorectal cancer risk?
Colorectal cancer (CRC) represents the third leading cause of cancer related deaths in the US. It has been proposed that much of that risk is driven by modifiable, environmental risk factors. However, years of research in pharmacogenomics has revealed that individual response to environmental risk factors differ across the population. There is no “one size fits all”.
Research within The Devall Lab is focused upon defining the biology underlying how these environmental risk factors influence CRC risk by interacting with an individual’s genetic variants. To do this, our lab utilizes a 3D colon organoid model that we derive from the healthy colon of individuals from UVA Health. We aim to utilize this cell culture model to address key questions in population health. By combining our expertise in bioinformatics, we employ numerous omic methods such as DNA methylation, RNA-sequencing and ATAC-sequencing to define robust mechanisms of environmental risk factors in healthy colon epithelial cells before investigating how genetic risk variants may alter inter-individual differences in response. By doing so, we aim to develop stronger insights into risk biology that will form the basis of more personalized risk estimates.
Identifying likely risk and chemopreventive targets through RNA-seq of colon organoid datasets. (A) Identifying drivers of gene expression differences associated with CRC environmental risk factors through network analysis. (B) Determining likely roles of significant modules through pathway enrichment; and (C) Contextualization of gene expression drivers through analysis of CRC tumor datasets.