Dr. Biju Issac earned his Masters and Bachelors of Science degree from Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, India.  He later received his PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India in 2005. Since then, he has gained extensive experience in bioinformatics analysis of Microarrays and Next-Generation sequencing analysis.

Dr. Issac wrote his first web server in 2002 on identifying protein coding genes in microbial and mammalian genomes using a combinatorial approach. Later, he joined a structural bioinformatics lab to learn how proteins form their 3D structure through X-ray crystallography. In 2006, he worked at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, in collaboration with Broad Institute at Cambridge, as a postdoctoral fellow studying chromatin modifications in Mouse stem cells using ChIP-Sequencing data. In 2008, he joined the National Cancer Institute, a National Institutes of Health facility at Bethesda, MD, where he analyzed microarray data from tumors to identify differentially expressed genes.

Currently, Dr. Issac works on analyzing various computational approaches to understand the differences in gene regulatory patterns in ‘normal’ and various tumors. His active interests include identifying genome rearrangements in various tumors, and their subtypes, using the next-generation sequencing technology.

Publications:

1. Issac B, Galoian K, Guettouche T, Navarro L and Temple HT (2014) Genome-wide mRNA and miRNA expression data analysis to screen for markers involved in sarcomagenesis in human chondrosarcoma cell lines. Genomics Data December. 2:320-324. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gdata.2014.10.001]
2. Ashlock BM, Ma Q, Issac B, Mesri EA (2014) Productively infected murine Kaposi’s sarcoma-like tumors define new animal models for studying and targeting KSHV oncogeneis and replication. PLoS One. Jan 28: 9(1):e87324. PMID: 24489895
3. Galoian KA, Geuttouche T, Issac B, Qureshi A, Temple and HT (2013) Regulation of onco and tumor suppressor MiRNAs by mTORC1 inhibitor PRP-1 in human chondrosarcoma. Tumor Biol. Nov 1. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 24178909
4. Galoian K, Guettouche T, Issac B, Navarro L and Temple H (2013) Lost miRNA surveillance of NOTCH, IGFR pathway-road to sarcomagenesis. Tumor Biol. Aug 20 [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 23959473
5. Geffin R, Martinez R, Perez R, Issac B and McCarthy M (2013), Apolipoprotein E-Dependent Differences in Innate Immune Responses of Maturing Human Neuroepithelial Progenitor Cells Exposed to HIV-1. J Neuroimmune Pharmacol, 8:1010-1026, doi: 10.1007/s11481-013-9478-0. PMID: 23744346
6. Han H, Bourboulia D, Jensen-Taubman S, Isaac B*, Wei B and Stetler-Stevenson WG (2013), An endogenous inhibitor of angiogenesis inversely correlates with side population phenotype and function in human lung cancer cells. Oncogene, doi: 10.1038/onc.2013.61 PMID: 23474755
7. Bourboulia D, Han H, Jensen-Taubman S, Gavil N, Isaac B*, Wei B, Neckers L, and Stetler-Stevenson WG (2013) TIMP-2 modulates cancer cell transcription profile and enhances Ecadherin/beta-catenin complex expression in A549 lung cancer cells. Oncotarget, 4(1):163-73.PMID: 23371049
8. Johnson S, Issac B, Zhao S, Bisht M, Celiku O, Tofilon P, Camphausen K and Shankavaram U (2012), StRAP: an integrated resource for profiling high-throughput cancer genomic data from stress response studies. PLoS ONE 7(12):e51693. PMID: 23284744