Systems Medicine in Pediatric Disease

Autism has risen to become one of the most pressing developmental health concerns. The phenotype, of which at least 60% stems from genetic causes, ranges from severe to mild. Interventions have strong potential to work yet can be difficult to access due to limitations in the current practices for diagnostics and therapeutics. In this talk, Professor Dennis Wall and Brianna Chrisman will describe computational approaches to decoding the genetic and environmental complexity of the autism phenotype and their potentials for improving detection and treatment.

Professor Wall will provide a detailed report on the lab's recent advances in computer vision artificial intelligence for mobile games & wearables and where opportunities lie for AI in adaptive diagnostic tracking and treatment. Next, he will summarize the lab's efforts to tie the autism phenotype to combinations of genetic and environmental features through crowdsourced acquisition and analysis of host and gut microbial DNA, respectively. Brianna Chrisman will then present findings from paired analysis of the gut microbiomes from 100 autistic children and their unaffected sibling over the course of 3 timepoints, which so far show significant enrichment of bacterial families and gene pathways in the gut microbiome of autistic children, notably those involved in lactate fermentation. They will close with overall implications of this work for earlier detection, prognosis, and treatment of autism, and potentially other complex neuropsychiatric conditions.

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SPEAKERS

Dennis Wall, PhD - Dr. Dennis Wall is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where his lab is developing novel approaches in systems biology to decipher the molecular pathology of autism spectrum disorder and related neurological disorders.

Dr. Wall received his doctorate in Integrative Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, where he pioneered the use of fast evolving gene sequences to trace population-scale diversification across islands. Then, with a postdoctoral fellowship award from the National Science Foundation, he went on to Stanford University to address broader questions in systems biology and computational genomics, work that resulted in comprehensive functional models for both protein mutation and protein interaction.

Dr. Wall has acted as science advisor to several biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, has developed cutting-edge approaches to cloud computing, and has received numerous awards, including an NSF postdoctoral fellowship, the Fred R. Cagle Award for Outstanding Achievement in Biology, the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Research, three awards for excellence in teaching, and the Harvard Medical School Leadership award.

Brianna Chrisman - Brianna joined the lab in summer 2018. She is in the Bioengineering Ph.D. program. She graduated with a B.S. in Bioengineering and Applied Physics from Yale University in 2015, and was a previous software engineer at Google.

She is interested in developing and applying statistical methods, machine learning paradigms, and multimodal data techniques to address outstanding questions and challenges in genomics and health informatics, including those in the iHART and microbiome projects.

The MCHRI Seminar Series highlight compelling clinical topics, innovative research, and the latest developments in maternal and child health at Stanford University, and serves as a forum for engaging in conversations with other researchers and scientists across the community. The seminars series is open to all, including faculty, staff, trainees, postdocs, and all members of the research community. Seats are limited, and reservation is required. Limited lunch will be provided on a first come, first served basis.