Gary D. Bader

The Bader lab uses molecular interaction, pathway and ‘omics data to gain a ‘causal’ mechanistic understanding of normal and disease phenotypes. They are developing novel computational approaches that combine molecular interaction and pathway information with ‘omics data to develop clinically predictive models and therapeutically targetable pathways. This research, for instance, helped identify a histone methylation inhibitor as the first therapeutic candidate for pediatric ependymoma, a common childhood brain cancer (Mack, Nature 2014). One major project working toward this goal is predicting deleterious mutations based on their effects on protein interactions. Dr. Bader also has a leadership role in the development of the freely available Cytoscape software for biological network analysis and visualization, Cytoscape Web (cytoscape.js), the Pathway Commons pathway/interaction resource, multiple interaction network related data exchange standards (BioPAX, PSI-MI, MIMIx) and the GeneMANIA gene function prediction software (www.genemania.org). All of these projects are highly collaborative and freely available.