Project Title:  Non-Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer

Aim/goals:

1. Collect blood and tissue specimens from non-muscle invasive bladder tumour resections.
2. Conduct whole genome and transcriptome sequencing on the samples.
3. Apply multiplex immunofluorescence and radiomics to identify the multiple, distinct populations of immune and inflammatory cells within the tissue.
4. Explore biomarkers in the data using artificial intelligence.

A surgical oncologist will collect whole blood and tissues from high-risk bladder tumor resections.   Investigators at the Queen’s and the KHSC Centre for Health Innovation will enhance the tumor molecular profiling initiative by sharing clinical and genomic data from these samples.  Experts from the Queen’s Pathology and Molecular Medicine Department will conduct whole genome and transcriptome sequencing.  Large amounts of quantitative features from medical images contained in the dataset will be extracted using radiomics image analysis technology.  Artificial intelligence will then be applied using computational algorithms to examine patterns in the data to explore potential biomarkers of disease response and progression.  By gathering and analyzing genomic and biological cancer cell data, researchers are working to accelerate the discovery of new innovations to improve health outcomes for cancer patients.