Purvesh Khatri, PhD, Associate Professor, Biomedical Informatics Research Center, Institute for Infection, Transplantation and Immunity, Stanford University

Research Description: Dr. Purvesh’s research is focused on developing novel computational methods and frameworks for large-scale integrated systems-level analysis of molecular data. He has developed several highly cited and widely used methods for (1) ontological and pathway analysis of high throughput molecular data, (2) leveraging biological, clinical, and technical heterogeneity in publicly available data for integrated, multi-cohort analyses, and (3) integration of high throughput epigenomic, genomics, proteomics, and cellular data. Using these methods, he has integrated data sets from multiple centers consisting of distinct patient cohorts with different biological and technical confounders, often in collaboration with many investigators on the Stanford campus, and at other institutes, (i) to identify highly specific and sensitive biomarkers for acute rejection across all transplanted organs, cancers (pancreatic cancer, small cell and non-small cell lung cancer), infectious diseases (sepsis, respiratory viral infections, tuberculosis, SARS-CoV-2), and autoimmune diseases, (ii) to suggest repositioning of FDA-approved drugs for treating patients with organ transplant or an autoimmune disease, (iii) to identify novel genes involved in non-small cell lung cancer and pancreatic cancer carcinogenesis that may be a potential drug target, and (iv) to predict vaccine response. Several of these diagnostics are now being translated as point-of-care diagnostics. More recently, he co-developed with Dr. Paul J Utz, a mass cytometry-based epigenetic profiling technique at a single-cell resolution, EpiTOF, for measuring changes in histone modifications at the single-cell level. Using OF, I have (i) quantified the effects of environment on epigenetics in aging, (ii) demonstrated memory in innate immune cells following vaccination, and (iii) identified a novel epigenetic mechanism regulating monocyte-to-macrophage differentiation. The importance of immune and inflammatory signals in obese tissues and the effects to metabolic health are considerably underexplored. His group has one of the most comprehensive systems level pictures of the immune system. They are very interested in working with NORC members to help bridge experiments in obesity and nutritional perturbations to better understand the link to adipose and other tissue damage and how this activates the immune system. Dr. Khatri actively collaborates with NORC investigator Dr. Maecker H.