JANUARY 2023

ADVANCED MOLECULAR DIAGNOSTICS SERVICE (AMDS) UPDATES

The Advanced Molecular Diagnostics Service has been actively working on expansion of our current clinical cancer genomic offerings to support integrated clinical cancer care for the UCLA Health System, and to identify, support and advance UCLA translational research into clinical use and technology transfer.

TEAM EXPANSION

In the last 2-3 years, the Advanced Molecular Diagnostics Service has significantly expanded the team and recruited 11 new employees:

  • Liying Zhang, MD, PhD, Director, Advanced Molecular Diagnostics Service
  • Cyriac Kandoth, PhD, Director, Clinical Bioinformatics, Molecular Diagnostics
  • Fumin Lin, PhD, Associate Director, Clinical Cytogenetics Laboratory and Molecular Diagnostics Laboratories (MDL)
  • Hua (Helen) Jin, PhD, Manager, Molecular Diagnostics Laboratories (MDL)
  • Layal Abi Farraj, PhD, Clinical Variant Scientist
  • Xiavan Roopnarinesingh, PhD, Software Engineer
  • Mahnoosh Rahimi, MS, Clinical Variant Scientist
  • Ian Atol, MS, Software Engineer
  • Beau Gray, CLS
  • Yuqing Zoe Zhang, PhD, CLS
  • Hailey Choi, PhD, CLS

PROMOTIONS/APPOINTMENTS
  • Thien Huynh, Sr. Specialist, R&D
  • Sze Man (Annabella) Leung, Sr. Specialist, Specimen Accession and Processing

The team launched two new solid tumor assays which utilize next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology to provide comprehensive tumor profiling for detection of substitutions (SNVs), insertion and deletion alterations (indels) and copy number variants (CNVs) and structural variants (SVs, gene fusions), as well as genomic signatures including microsatellite instability (MSI) and tumor mutational burden (TMB). These assays identity genetic alterations for cancer diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic purposes. These assays were launched in early December 2022:

  • Pan-cancer Solid Tumor NGS panel (1080 genes)
  • Solid Tumor Fusion Panel (145 genes)

Starting from back (left-to-right):

Back - Jian (Jamie) Zhou, MS (CLS); Josh Deignan, PhD (Associate Director); Xiavan Roopnarinesingh, PhD (Bioinformatics Engineer); Layal Abi Farraj, PhD (Variant Scientist);
 
Cyriac Kandoth, PhD (Bioinformatics Director); Ian Atol, MS (Bioinformatics Engineer); Alden Huang, PhD (Fellow); Thien Huynh (Sr. CLS Specialist);
 
Svetlana (Lana) Rapoport (ISS Application Analyst, Beaker); Mahnoosh Rahimi, MS (Variant Scientist); Sze Man (Annabella) Leung (Sr. CLS Specialist); Fumin Lin, PhD (Associate Director);
 
Front - Sung-Hae (Sue) Kang, PhD (Associate Director); Leila Youssefian, PhD (Fellow); Liying (Lily) Zhang, MD, PhD (Director); Hua (Helen) Jin, PhD (Manager); Yan Li (Sr. CLS Specialist)
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