Zemin Zhang Principal Scientist: Bioinformatics & Computational Biology Profile | Education/Background | Top Scientific Papers | Awards & Honors

"I came to Genentech in January 1998 to join a large research program that used genomics technologies to find novel secreted proteins with therapeutic potential. Subsequently I have participated in a series of target discovery initiatives in which bioinformatics has played a pivotal role in identifying kinases or cell surface proteins with desirable physicochemical and expression characteristics. It is gratifying to see that computational approaches are directly contributing to our early-stage drug pipeline. At the same time, my collaborations with experimental scientists have inspired new research directions in bioinformatics that are relevant and interesting. The ability to do both basic and applied research has been a major attraction to many scientists, including myself."

Current Projects "Cancer genomics has been our long-lasting interests. Next generation sequencing technologies provide unprecedented opportunities to reveal mysteries hidden in the complex mutational landscape of cancer. One aspect of our current work is to use emerging technologies such as the Complete Genomics platform to perform whole genome sequencing of cancer samples. Using the short-read sequence data, we are in the process of characterizing a wide variety of genetic alterations including point mutations and structural variations. In combination with other data types such as expression microarrays, SNP arrays, and Illumina-based RNA-Seq, we are studying how new insights from whole genome information can help us understand cancer biology and drug response. Another complementary aspect of our current work is the use of computational methods to predict the functional consequence of a given genetic lesion. This has been an active research area in my group, and I expect we will continue to leverage our expertise in this domain to distinguish driver from passenger mutations in cancer genomes."

Collaborations "It is hard to predict important future discoveries, but they will likely come from interdisciplinary collaborations. Recently my group has undertaken very broad cancer genome characterization studies, which require close collaboration with scientists from the sequencing facility, the microarray lab, the pathology and tissue groups, the diagnostics team, and other programmers and computational biologists. This is where Genentech shines. We thrive in large-scale collaborations."

Inspiration/Vision "Cancer genomes hold secrets to how tumors arise, develop, and respond to drugs. In the near future computational modeling and analysis of these cancer genomes will become a dominant force in cancer biology and therapeutics. It is inspiring to be in the middle of such an opportunity of a lifetime."