Core B will provide essential statistical, computational, and informatics expertise that will be necessary for all Gl SPORE projects and investigators to achieve the translational goals of the SPORE grant in a timely and efficient manner. Core B personnel are expertly qualified for this task and represent a broad spectrum of capability in biostatistics and computational analysis. They contributed significantly to the Gl SPORE projects in the previous grant period through extensive interactions with SPORE investigators and have been actively involved with experimental design and analysis for each project in this competing renewal application. Core B contributions will fall into two main areas, biostatistics and informatics. Biostatistical analysis includes descriptive analysis of data, hypothesis testing, group comparisons using t- tests or analysis of variance, linear and logistic regression, zero-inflated Poisson regression, Generalized Estimating Equations, and assessment of relationships between time and potential clinical, laboratory, and treatment covariates. Transformations are used as needed to meet statistical assumptions and,when such transformations are not available, nonparametric procedures are used. False discovery rates are estimated to compensate for multiple comparisons common in high throughput data analysis. Biostatistical input also includes an essential role in planning of projects, study design, and protocol development. Informatics-includes web sites for data storage and information sharing, data management support, bioinformatics support for sequence and genome analysis, software methods for finding and validating predictive markers and drug targets, haplotype analysis, advanced computational modeling of large data sets, and biological interpretation of microarray and high-throughput data. Core B personnel are expert data managers and perl/java/R programmers prepared to meet the computational needs of the SPORE grant. The combined biostatistical and informatics expertise of Core B thus offers a full range of data analysis and exploratory methods that will be of enormous importance to each SPORE project. This assistance will be made available by regular meetings with SPORE investigators and projects and through Core B service requests. The core Director Dr. Sylvan Green and co-Director Dr. David Mount will work closely together to assure that all requests for Core B collaboration are met in a prompt and effective manner.
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