Melissa S. Cline

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Melissa Suzanne Cline is an American biologist. She is an Associate Research Scientist at the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute Between June 2001 and December 2004 she was a staff scientist at Affymetrix, Inc. in Emeryville, California where she was involved in developing ANOSVA, a "statistical method to identify alternative spicing from expression data," during which she "analyzed the effects of alternative splicing on protein transmembrane and signal peptide regions". [1] Subsequently, she moved to UC Santa Cruz, where she wrote on genome browsing. [2] According to the Thomson Reuters report, she was one of the most highly cited scientists in the world in 2012/13. [3]

Cline is currently the program manager for the BRCA Exchange, a platform that shares knowledge on the tens of thousands of BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 genetic variants that could influence a person's susceptibility to breast cancer, particularly on the clinical significance of those variants. [4] One of the challenge in curating the clinical impact of genetic variants is that is the curation often relies on clinical evidence of the variants in patients and their families; to protect patient privacy, most genetic data is siloed, or maintained in closed databases where the data are inaccessible to most researchers. [5] Addressing this problem, Dr. Cline and colleagues devised a "federated analysis" approach to analyze patient data within its secure home repository, gathering new knowledge for variant curation while safeguarding patient privacy. [6] [7] This approach has successfully gathered new variant knowledge from siloed data, advancing the curation of BRCA variants. [8] [9]

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References

  1. ↑ "Melissa Susanne Cline" (PDF). University of California, Santa Cruz. Retrieved 14 November 2015.
  2. ↑ Cline, Melissa S; Kent, W James (2009-02-01). "Understanding genome browsing". Nature Biotechnology. 27 (2): 153–155. doi:10.1038/nbt0209-153. ISSN   1087-0156. PMID   19204697. S2CID   205265560.
  3. ↑ "The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds 2014" (PDF). Duke University, Durham, North Carolina: Thomson Reuters. 2014. p. 13. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 November 2015. Retrieved 14 November 2015.
  4. ↑ Miyatsu, Rose (October 23, 2023). "Working to improve clarity for patients assessing their genetic breast cancer risk".
  5. ↑ Diamond, Joel (July 13, 2018). "Don't lock genomic data into silos". MedCity News.
  6. ↑ Cline, Melissa (August 2023). "Federated Analysis for Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing: A Technical and Legal Primer". Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics. 24: 347–368. doi:10.1146/annurev-genom-110122-084756.
  7. ↑ Cline, Melissa (March 9, 2022). "Federated analysis of BRCA1 and BRCA2 variation in a Japanese cohort". Cell Genomics. 2 (3).
  8. ↑ "How a bot beamed from California to Japan may stop unnecessary mastectomies for breast cancer patients". Global Alliance for Genomics and Health News. June 3, 2022.
  9. ↑ Borfitz, Deborah (June 14, 2022). "'Federated Analysis' Helps Fill Genetic Risk Knowledge Gap On BRCA Genes". Bio-IT World.


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