Battling against cancer - Research interest for a PhD application

research interest for a PhD application

Hi everyone,

I hope you don't mind reviewing my research interest for a PhD application in TU Dresden.
Here's the instruction.

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Please write an essay (max 3,500 characters) describing your research interests. Specifically, describe which research area you find most interesting and why. Explain your research objectives and how they relate to our program.

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Battling against cancer has been embodied as my interest, stemming from my experience working in a national cancer centre. Specifically, I have been fascinated in two aspects: the genomic consequences of DNA repair damage and the integration of multi-omics to elucidate the potentially targeted aberrations.

Firstly, I have been fascinated by DNA repair damage especially in terms of how it leads to the accumulation of mutation and structural rearrangements. Through my dissertation, I discovered that even before precancer lesions (histologically normal lung epithelium) occur, mutational burden differed among the neighbouring basal cells whose low mutational burden showing overexpression of DNA repair pathways. This suggests that high risk of mutagenesis may link to DNA repair damage. What intrigued me more is that whether it can be measured and extrapolated to the application of drug-patient matching of currently available targeted drugs. In my opinion, it will be revolutionary to find and refine the cancer subtype based on omics properties: genomics, transcriptomics, and epigenomics.

Secondly, I am interested in the comprehensively and holistically molecular view of cancer, provided by omics (epigenomic, genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic) as the system biology. The relationship between these omics layers and how to bridge the gap between genotype and phenotype were then becoming my curiosity which translated into a multi-omic project during my master's degree. I was perplexed by the result revealing the functional heterogeneity linking to mutational heterogeneity of lungs' basal cells related to the smoking effect, which became the first to interrogate lung basal cells at a wider resolution.

What intrigued me after my thesis project is applying omics analysis for pharmacological purpose. Recent studies only addressed pharmacogenomics, yet I am interested in expanding the investigation of pharmacogenomics and pharmacotranscriptomics to determine biomarkers predicting the drug response. This will prevent cancer patients from unwanted complications from mismatched treatment and enhance drug effectiveness for specific subpopulation, revolutionizing the current treatment selection.

What is more rewarding from further implementation is the use of machine learning prediction based on the omics key features to determine the prognosis and treatment outcome of the patients. In this case, the interplay between lifestyle, environment, and heritability might be of interests to define high-risk individuals of acquiring mutations. Assessing and elucidating the biological information combined with clinical data are essentials for guiding therapeutic decisions as they provide a comprehensive view.

This PhD program offers computational biology as one of the multidisciplinary scientific fields which I am interested to join. Specifically, I found that Dr Anna Poetsch's projects align with my research curiosities. In line with her previous work entitled "Genomic landscape of oxidative DNA damage and repair reveals regioselective protection from mutagenesis" and "AP-Seq: a method to measure apurinic sites and small base adducts genome-wide, it will be of the utmost importance to map the genomic aberrations and link them to the treatment selection. Additionally, what is equally exciting is to quantify the DNA damage pattern by other mechanisms (nucleotide excision repair, mismatch repair and double-strand breaks) and incorporate them into a single pipeline, similar to what Dr Poetsch developed in AP-Seq.

You need to balance the discussion between 3 aspects:

- Your research interest
- The potential importance of your research when paired with an aligned research path (possible collaborative research)
- The possible breakthroughs that your research interests and Dr Anna Poetsch's can produce, creating an important discovery for the university

You need to approach the presentation from a collaborative aspect as a Phd student is more focused on discovery - rather than simply learning. simple learning isthe approach you took in this presentation. Balance each of your interests with the professor, research, and program. These are practically afterthoughts in your presentation when it should be integrated with each of your research interests.