Itay Fayer (JASANOFF LAB)

Development of a Dual Imaging System to Measure Functional Connectivity between the Brain and Gut

The brain is influenced by signals from various organs, especially the gastrointestinal tract, impacting mood, behavior, and potentially causing disorders like irritable bowel syndrome and autism. Understanding the brain-body crosstalk is crucial. Past research lacked the capability to study these interactions at a multi-organ level with high spatiotemporal resolution. Our project aims to explore key aspects of enteric interoception: the relationship between gut dynamics and brain activity over time, and the correlation between gut and brain-wide neural activity. We're employing a novel dual-coil system for simultaneous gut-brain imaging and a MRI-detectable serotonin sensor to indirectly monitor gut neural activity, aiming to elucidate these interactions.

Nikos Meimetis (LAUFFENBURGER LAB)

Modeling Drugs’ On- and Off-target Effects on Tumor Cell Signaling Using Artificial Neural Networks

Alterations in expression or activities of cells' signaling network nodes associated with malignant transformation represent potential therapeutic targets for cancer treatment, such as through small molecule inhibitor drugs. These perturbations do not generally function exclusively through their proposed mechanism of action, leading to off-target effects. We simultaneously modeled on- and off-target effects by using artificial neural networks, primed with prior knowledge networks, to predict the regulatory effect of drug perturbations and infer unknown drug-target interactions.