Josh Kaminker

Director of OMNI Bioinformatics and Senior Scientist, Bioinformatics & Computational Biology

Postdoc Mentor

"Genentech is a place where Bioinformatics plays a very real and profound role in making scientific discoveries that may ultimately benefit patients."

Years at Genentech

Publications

Awards & Honors

I studied Mathematics and Biology as an undergraduate, moving on to pure bench work in graduate school. With a continued interest in computational biology, I moved to a genomics group at Berkeley for my postdoc. I joined the Bioinformatics department at Genentech in 2004 with the aim of having an impact on the treatment of human diseases. I have continued to be engaged in extremely interesting and rewarding scientific projects in oncology and neuroscience. Throughout my career I have been immensely impressed by the scientific talent and collaborative nature of research at Genentech.

Postdoctoral Mentor

Sensory neurons play a fundamental role in transducing external stimuli from the periphery to the central nervous system. We are interested in using cutting edge single cell-based approaches to understand the biology of sensory neurons in pain and airway inflammation. Our work is highly collaborative and we work closely with multiple laboratories in both neuroscience and immunology, creating a unique and stimulating environment that fully integrates computational biology with bench experimentation.

Featured Publication

Untangling the brain's neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative transcriptional responses.

Nat Commun. 2016 Apr 21;7:11295.

Srinivasan K, Friedman BA, Larson JL, Lauffer BE, Goldstein LD, Appling LL, Borneo J, Poon C, Ho T, Cai F, Steiner P, van der Brug MP, Modrusan Z, Kaminker JS, Hansen DV.

View Abstract

My group is deeply interested in using bioinformatics approaches to understand how transcriptional changes at the cellular level impact disease biology. Within Neuroscience our efforts are focused on understanding the role of such changes in driving neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s and ALS. We collaborate very closely with bench scientists to develop and pursue computational and biological hypotheses. We are also applying similar computational approaches to help define the role of different populations of sensory neurons in pain perception.

A Common Variant of IL-6R is Associated with Elevated IL-6 Pathway Activity in Alzheimer's Disease Brains

Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, ISSN: 18758908

Patrick Haddick; Jessica L. Larson; Nisha Rathore; Tushar Bhangale; Qui T. Phung; Karpagam Srinivasan; David Hansen; Jennie Lill; Margaret A. Pericak-Vance; Jonathan Haines; Lindsay A. Farrer; John S.K. Kauwe; Gerard D. Schellenberg; Carlos Cruchaga; Alison Goate; Tim Behrens; Ryan Watts; Robert R. Graham; Josh Kaminker; Marcel van der Brug

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Josh Kaminker

Director of OMNI Bioinformatics and Senior Scientist, Bioinformatics & Computational Biology

Featured Publication

Untangling the brain's neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative transcriptional responses.