Ying Ding, PhD, a professor of biostatistics and health data science at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, has received a Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (R35 MIRA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health.
The five-year award, totaling approximately $2 million, will support Ding's research to develop new statistical and machine learning methods that help predict how chronic diseases progress and identify which treatments are most likely to benefit individual patients.
Rather than relying on a single type of information, Ding's methods will combine multiple sources of patient data — including medical imaging, genetics, genomics, electronic health records and other biomarkers — to improve disease prediction and support more personalized treatment decisions.
The research will focus on diseases with major public health impact, including cancer, progressive eye diseases, Alzheimer's disease and pulmonary diseases.
“Patients often respond differently to the same treatment,” said Ding. “We want to identify which groups of patients are more likely to benefit from a treatment based on their genetic profiles and other biomarkers, then develop individualized treatment recommendations.”
Her team will work to improve four key areas of precision medicine: predicting disease progression over time, estimating treatment effects for individual patients, identifying patient subgroups with similar responses and developing personalized treatment recommendations.
Unlike a traditional NIH R01 grant — which funds specific research aims — the R35 MIRA program supports investigators with a demonstrated record of scientific achievement and provides flexibility to pursue a broader research vision over five years.
The award builds on Ding's recently completed R01 grant, also funded by NIGMS, and represents continued support from the institute for her research program.
“This award recognizes the work we've already accomplished while giving us the flexibility to continue advancing these methods,” Ding said. “It also provides a clear direction for my research program and creates opportunities for my graduate students to build dissertation and thesis projects around these topics.”
-Ava Dzurenda