Visitors Talk: Yasser Iturria-Medina, McGill University

Abstract

Progressive diseases (e.g., neurodegenerative conditions) often start with non-detectable clinical symptoms and may take years (or even decades) to develop. Understanding the underlying multifactorial biological mechanisms and their intrinsic heterogeneity is of crucial importance for accurate diagnosis and personalizing therapeutic interventions. We will present our work on integrating multiple biological levels (from cellular molecular data to macroscopic and clinical information) for characterizing individual disease progression and identifying therapeutic needs. Both empirical and mechanistic disease progression models applied to multi-omics molecular and multimodal neuroimaging will be discussed, in the context of neurodegeneration (e.g., Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases). Associated user-friendly computational tools will also be presented, as well as their implications for Precision Medicine.

About the speaker

Dr. Yasser Iturria-Medina holds a Canada Research Chair in Data Integration in Neurodegeneration, and is an Associate Professor at The Montreal Neurological Institute. He is also an associate member of the Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics and Mental Health, the McGill University Research Centre for Studies in Aging, and the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre. His lab focuses on defining and implementing multiscale and multifactorial body-brain models for understanding neurological disorders and identifying effective personalized interventions. For this, his team integrates molecular omics, multimodal neuroimaging and clinical data via empirical and mechanistic computational tools (http://www.neuropm-lab.com/).