Using data and technology to beat breast cancer

Niantao’s grant is funded by Cure Cancer, Cancer Australia Priority-driven Collaborative Cancer Research Scheme and our principal supporter, the Can Too Foundation.

Niantao is based at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research.

Born in China, Niantao obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2006. He then completed his Master’s in statistics and his PhD in Computation Biology at the National University of Singapore in 2013, moving to Sydney in 2014. In his career so far he has worked on a variety of projects involving genetic and epigenetic analysis of gastric cancer, using large amounts of sequencing data.

His previous research work on genomic alterations in gastric cancer has already had a significant impact in the field, resulting in a phase-one clinical trial in Singapore of targeted therapy for gastric cancers.

His research

The use of neoadjuvant therapy – steps to shrink tumours – before surgery to make them operable in breast cancers is increasingly common. Dr Niantao Deng and his team at the Garvan Institute and University of New South Wales would like to expand on this work by using a novel, single-cell sequencing technology to analyse breast cancers before and after the therapy. In this way they aim to understand why some patients respond well to the treatment and some don’t.

“I’d like to understand the mechanisms of patients’ responses to treatment at the individual cell level,” Niantao explains. “Because we have direct access to their samples before and after treatment, we see our findings as potentially translating into the clinic. Our ultimate goal is to find a way to overcome patients’ resistance to treatment and personalise it to ensure they have better outcomes.”

With these aims in mind, too, Niantao’s current interests include using statistical methods to analyse and integrate large amounts of breast cancer data. He believes this will help him address critical questions, like how some patients respond to their disease and predicting how they will react to certain drugs.

The importance of research

Niantao believes that successful medical researchers must have qualities that include intelligence, a kind heart, desire to care for patients and persistence. The latter is certainly true in his case. This year represents his third attempt to get a Cure Cancer grant. “It’s very challenging nowadays!” he laughs.

“The grant means a lot to me, personally and professionally. This is such an exciting project that will allow me to establish collaborations with other researchers, including clinicians and biologists, which will be critical for us to make real progress.”

Niantao first became interested in cancer genomics when he was doing his Master’s in Singapore, At the time next-generation sequencing revolutionised genomics and he was fascinated by the amount of data it generated.

“That’s when I got the opportunities to work on real patients’ data. My supervisors often reminded me that those weren’t just numbers; behind each number there was a real patient in need. Now I know what I’m doing can really make a difference and benefit people, and this more than anything else motivates me in my work. Helping patients to find a cure is the ultimate goal for researchers like myself, and I’ll do my best to achieve that.”

" My supervisors often reminded me that those weren’t just numbers; behind each number there was a real patient in need"

Together, we can cure cancer.

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