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Bobbie-Jo Webb-Robertson, PhD

Chief Scientist, Computational Biology

Bobbie-Jo Webb-Robertson, PhD

Chief Scientist, Computational Biology

Biography

Personalized medicine aspires to develop drugs tailored to each person's needs. But personalized medicine requires a toolbox that can rummage through all the changes happening simultaneously in a person's body using big data toolbox to search through genes, proteins, fats, sugars and other molecules. These tools, often referred to by scientists collectively as “omics" contain clues to what does wrong in a disease process.

Computational biologist Bobbie-Jo Webb-Robertson is an expert on the “omics” toolbox. She heads up PMedIC, a co-laboratory between Oregon Health & Science University and PNNL. The work combines molecular tools with imaging and clinical results to let physicians customize a treatment plan for individuals. PNNL provides the molecular tools expertise and OHSU provides the clinical side.

"We're really good at doing large molecular profile studies and understanding how those profiles change in response to disease or drugs. This knowledge is fundamental to developing precision medicine therapeutics," said Webb-Robertson. "We are doing projects in everything from cancer to placental health, HIV to coronavirus."

Webb-Robertson is also helping to create a research database for diabetes. The Network for Pancreatic Organ Donors with Diabetes, or nPOD at the University of Florida, collects tissue from organ donors who had juvenile (Type 1) diabetes. Studying this tissue creates vast amounts of data from disparate sources. Webb-Robertson leads a working group for nPOD that combines clinical and laboratory data to help scientists discover new data patterns that shed light on  Type 1 diabetes. She recently received the Spirit of nPOD award for her efforts. She traces her start in decision sciences, a degree she customized to integrate research in statistics and biology—an approach she continues today.

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