Research Vision

Cancer is a disease of the genome, fueled by the accumulation of genomic alterations that improve the fitness of the cell. We use data-driven computational and molecular biology approaches to study why mutations occur and how they make cancer cells evolve, with the overarching goal to understand the mutational processes that allow tumor cells to escape and evolve to cause treatment-resistance. We have a particular interest in the larger complex structural variants, their presence and impact on the disease trajectory of the patient.

Research Focus​

To address our overall research vision, the overarching goals are to:

• Predict clinical trajectories from cancer patients by developing methods to i) reconstruct and model the clonal evolution, ii) analyze clonal dynamics and interplay with tumor microenvironment, with the overarching goal to study mechanisms of cancer stem cells.
• Investigate the interplay between epigenetic and genetic alterations using data-driven quantitative genetics-based computational approaches.
• Apply chromatin architecture methodologies to uncover how alterations outside of protein-coding regions can deregulate cancer genes to cause aggressive disease.

We work in close contact with clinicians to investigate how a genomic-informed personalised analysis can be leveraged to guide improved deicision-making in the clinic, to the benefit of the patients. 

Orcid profile of Joachim Weischenfeldt

​Orcid profile of Joachim Weischenfeldt including CV and publications