The Cancer Bioinformatics Shared Resource (CBSR) supports University of Illinois Cancer Center (UICC) members by providing a variety of bioinformatics services and resources. The major goal of CBSR is to facilitate the development of strong interdisciplinary cancer programs by providing necessary bioinformatics resources to UICC members. In particular, the CBSR strives to bridge the gap between clinicians and basic researchers for collaborations on translational cancer research.
Email Dr. Xiaowei Wang at [email protected] to request resources.
Our Services
The CBSR employs fee-for-service model for standard bioinformatics requests from UICC members. This is a cost-effective strategy to handle user requests in an efficient way using standard bioinformatics pipelines. On the other hand, for complex or non-standard bioinformatics requests, we employ a collaborator/co-investigator model to better service the members in the long term.
Consultation services
The CBSR offers free consultation meetings with all UICC members regarding various bioinformatics needs related to cancer research. The major goal of these meetings is to help UICC researchers identify bioinformatics requirements for designing research projects and developing data analysis plans. These consultation services are an important first step to engage UICC members and subsequently provide appropriate bioinformatics supports tailored for individual research projects.
Bioinformatics data analysis services
The CBSR provides a wide array of data analysis services to UICC members. Common tasks include the analysis of high-throughput omics data generated by UICC members. The CBSR provides comprehensive solutions to process various types of data, most commonly involving transcriptomics (e.g., bulk, single-cell, spatial sequencing), genomics (e.g., ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq), epigenomics, metabolomics, and proteomics. Besides helping on the analysis of user-generated data, the CBSR also provides data mining services based on public genomic data repositories such as The Cancer Genome Atlas.
Infrastructural support for bioinformatics research
In collaboration with the UICC Data Integration Shared Resource (DISR), the CBSR recently established cloud computing capacity based on the Amazon Azure platform. This Azure cluster is readily accessible to all UICC members who need extensive computing power to perform their own bioinformatics analysis. In addition, the CBSR has five Linux workstations that are accessible to UICC members for less-intensive bioinformatics analysis jobs.
Meet Our Team
The CBSR is supported by faculty and staff who have extensive experience in cancer bioinformatics.
Xiaowei Wang, PhD, Faculty Director: Professor of Pharmacology and Regenerative Medicine and Biomedical
Engineering. Dr. Wang has developed various computational models and bioinformatics applications, which
have been referenced by thousands of publications.
Mark Maienschein-Cline, Resource Director: Dr. Maienschein-Cline has many years of experience in providing
bioinformatics services to UIC researchers. His group has close collaboration with the UIC Genome Research
Core, providing all necessary bioinformatics support for the analysis of high-throughput omics data.
Daisy Cintron, Senior Research Specialist: Daisy coordinates and manages daily activities at the CBSR. She is
responsible for scheduling and communicating bioinformatics services with UICC members.
