$$Events$$

Nov. 30, 2021
13:00
-14:00

Building 96, Room 001

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Speaker:  Dr. Anat Reiner-Benaim

School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences


Title: Developing a robust diagnostic test based on antigen microarray data​


Abstract:

 This study describes the development of a classification model aimed to rule out the diagnosis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). This disease is mediated by an autoimmune process that includes a large spectrum of autoantibodies. Patients vary in the particular antibodies they express, as well as in the clinical patterns. Moreover, prevalence is evidently affected by gender, race and geography. Due to this complexity, no single serologic test can diagnose for SLE, and a definitive, objective diagnostic tool is needed.

In developing the test, the strategy was based on a combination of meaningful SLE antigens derived from multiple molecular classes. The aim was to overcome the complexity and find a common autoantibody profile among the heterogeneous SLE population that can distinguish between SLE and healthy patients. Using the antigen array technology, the level of approximately 200 antigens was measured for 246 SLE patients and 252 matched healthy controls. Six different multivariate classification models were implemented and their performance was evaluated based on the balance between sensitivity and specificity. The most informative antigens were selected by an iterative training-testing procedure, and then the performance of the models was compared using ROC plots on blinded samples.

After choosing the best performing model, it was tested on a new set of independent samples.​


 ענת ריינר בן-נעים.jpg

Bio:

My specialty area is statistics, in the fields of biostatistics, biomedical informatics and bioinformatics. I received my PhD from the Department of Statistics and Operations Research of Tel-Aviv University under the guidance of Prof. Yoav Benjamini. Its title was "Controlling the FDR for Multiple Testing Involved in the Statistical Analysis of Gene Expression Data". I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Computational Systems Biology Group of Prof. Eytan Domany at the Weizmann Institute and of Prof. Ron Davis at the Stanford Genome Technology Center, Stanford University, USA.

My research focuses mainly on statistical issues rising in large scale data analysis, particularly for health records, epidemiology and "omics" data. I study statistical error control across numerous hypotheses, scan-based statistical methodology, and incorporation of artificial intelligence algorithms with advanced statistical modelling.    

Within recent collaboration with Rambam hospital, I addressed contemporary hospital-related challenges, such as diagnostics, personalized medicine, cost-effectiveness of intervention and analysis of free text from medical reports. I have been recently involved in studies on hospitalized COVID-19 patients, concerning presentation and trajectory of the disease in comparison to Influenza, and with regard to continuously monitored oximetry measures at the intensive care unit.