It can be fruitful to investigate areas that have been under-explored \u2013
\nunderstudied medical conditions, or intersections of conditions (such as
\npregnancy and autoimmune disease). In some cases, areas have been
\noverlooked for unfortunate historical reasons. More often, these areas have been
\nunderstudied because there are involved complex trajectories of disease that
\nspan across different medical specialties and areas of biological expertise. To
\nmake progress, we need to combine multiple types of biomedical data, using
\nboth data-driven and knowledge-informed computational approaches.<\/p>\n
We also work on scaling. Can we investigate 1000 research questions
\nsimultaneously at low cost on existing data, to help prioritize which directions are
\nmost worthwhile for following up with more resource-intensive prospective
\nstudies?<\/p>\n
Part of the challenge of good research is deciding which directions to pursue:
\nsystems medicine research motivates us to find better ways to inform our
\ndecisions, and to scale our technology so we don\u2019t have to make as many trade-
\noffs.<\/p>\n
The Hadlock Lab works on immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs),
\nwhich includes a wide range of conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis,
\ninflammatory bowel disease and systemic lupus erythematosus. Each condition
\nis somewhat uncommon but altogether IMIDs affect hundreds of millions of
\npeople worldwide. Studying these conditions pushes the boundaries on
\nunderstanding intersections between the germline genome, somatic
\nrecombination in the immune system, exposures (infectious disease,
\nenvironmental factors, and drug treatments) and wide range of common medical
\nconditions and treatments across the lifespan.
\nWe appreciate the interdisciplinary environment across ISB, because we know
\nthat advances to help patients will come at the intersections of fundamental
\nbiology, biotechnology, mathematics, data science and medicine.<\/p>\n
Some changes that have the potential to significantly improve patients\u2019 health,
\nare difficult to implement within our existing healthcare ecosystem. As a result,
\nmany projects focus on incremental improvements in treatment, and fewer
\nprojects make long-term investments toward prevent the onset of illness and
\ninjury. I think more funding is needed to support longitudinal studies for
\npreventative systems medicine. It would also be great to support more
\ncollaboration with communities that have existing knowledge and creative new
\nideas for improving health across the life-span.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How do you come up with research ideas? It can be fruitful to investigate areas that have been under-explored \u2013 understudied medical conditions, or intersections of conditions (such as pregnancy and autoimmune disease). In some cases, areas have been overlooked for unfortunate historical reasons. More often, these areas have been understudied because there are involved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":0,"parent":454,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-480","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":482,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/480\/revisions\/482"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}