Project R-11724

Cooperation agreement between Hasselt University and VITO concerning the PhD of Alejandro Correa Rojo: "Xomics data analysis and integration in precision health" (Research)

Our established healthcare system is no longer sustainable due to the aging population demographics and the transformation of many fatal disorders into chronic diseases. Preventive healthcare is rising to the challenge of providing early diagnosis and assistance to the risk group populations, effectively allowing individuals to live healthy instead of living with chronic diseases. In this research project we evaluate the dynamics, surrogacy and strengths of several omic technologies to serve as a basis for risk profiles for chronic diseases. For this purpose, within the "I am Frontier" cohort, we are following 30 healthy participants on a monthly basis, which we use to generate different omics data sets including(but not limited to) genomics (Whole Genome Sequencing), epigenetics(Methylation), clinical biomarkers, microbiome, proteomics, and metabolomics. Moreover, we collect information about physiological parameters (heart-rate, sleep patterns …) and lifestyle (activity, food intake, stress, ...) via questionnaires and wearables. This data, used in combination with open science data from a range of diseases, allow us to profile individual risks for the onset of a disease. The aim of this bioinformatics research project is to put the genomic information layer central to investigate and develop new approaches for utilizing genome data interactions between molecular intermediates, like, e.g., genome–metabolome, genome-proteome and genome-epigenome, that are relevant for the clinical outcome. The data of the "I am Frontier" cohort can be augmented by publicly available information from different repositories like, the Cancer Genome Atlas, 1000 genomes project, etc. Hence affinity to creating genomics and other omics processing pipelines and workflows is crucial for the success of this project. An interesting secondary research objective is to evaluate the surrogacy and redundancy in the genomic data when contrasted to other molecular layers. This could be of importance when considering issues related to GDPR.

01 April 2021 - 31 March 2026