Genomics for Better Healthcare.
Dr. Ye?im Ayd?n Son is a medical scientist holding a M.D. and a Ph.D. in Genome Sciences and Technologies. She is the head Health Informatics Department and faculty of the Bioinformatics Program. Main focus of her research is modeling of chronic and complex diseases based on integrated genomic and clinical data. After validation of the models, their implementation as clinical decision support systems will be aiding healthcare providers to use genomic information for diagnosis and treatment of patients. Her group have released a java based integrated software called METU-SNP, for genome wide association and prioritization of SNP biomarkers through a novel AHP based algorithm. METU-SNP also provides discovery of genes and pathways related to diseases. pi-SNP, the web-service of METU-SNP, is underdevelopment and will be ready for release by 2014 (http://pi-snp-test.ii.metu.edu.tr/). Her group continuous to investigate application of different data mining approaches to better associate genotyping data with diseases and they have recently showed that the SVM-ID3 hybrid method outperforms only SVM for modeling prostate cancer. Genotyping and analysis of clinical data of Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, Alzheimer?s and Parkinson?s Disease, diabetes and various cancers are among her ongoing projects.
In 2012, with Teknogiri?im funding awarded to her team, she co-founded the GENformatik Company in METU Technopark A.?. GENformatik is now developing a new genomic test based on SNP profiling for the determination of drug side effects in schizophrenic patients. GENformatik?s second project is funded by EuroSTAR Program to develop a diagnostic test for rapid monitoring of viral infections in bee colonies.
An interview on METU-BIN, Bioinformatics education and research in Turkey can be reached at http://www.metu.edu.tr/tr/researchers/assist-prof-dr-yesim-aydin-son-metu-informatics-institute-health-informatics-department