Dr. Raymond Ng receives 2024 Genome BC Award for Scientific Excellence
The Genome BC Award for Scientific Excellence honours an individual in B.C. who has received significant recognition in the field of genomics.
“This came as a huge surprise as I received a phone call from Life Sciences BC. I didn't even know that I had been nominated,” says Ng.
“It is always great to be recognized. However, this award is especially important because it recognizes our work on big data over the course of 20 years. It is a good amount of time to see the impact or our work as a stepping stone for other research and current best practices. Knowing the impact is very gratifying.”
The Early Days
In the late 1990’s – the early days of genome sequencing – Professor Ng was intrigued by the huge potential for data mining to transform personalized medicine and genomics. He was particularly interested in both outlier detection and clustering and their major impact on personalized medicine applications.
Together with collaborators in pathology, Ng co-led multiple Genome Canada and Genome British Columbia human health projects to identify better biomarkers for transplantation and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), with total funding from 2005-2017 exceeding $20M.
The computational team Ng led developed novel and statistically sound approaches for mining pipelines of genomic data pertaining to heart failures, kidney failures and various lung conditions while ensuring high quality control of data.
The Challenge and Solution
“There are many data problems related to genomics data including large volume, data quality, different types of molecular data, and how to normalize, harmonize and link together,” says Ng.
He explains one key aspect has been building predictive models — core machine-learning tasks — to diagnose and prognose diseases.
“Ironically, while today people are buzzing about AI and health, we started using machine learning more than 20 years ago to identify blood-based biomarkers for major medical conditions,” say Ng.
Solution in Action
From 2008 to 2022, Ng served as the Chief Informatics Officer of The PROOF Centre of Excellence for the prevention of organ failures, a federally funded commercialization NCE, where he led computational biologists, statisticians, and data scientists to handle all aspects of data analytics and conduct various genomics studies on heart, lung and kidney failures.
From a computation research standpoint, key publications revolve around pipelines and quality control for mining genomics data, and those analysis pipelines have been applied successfully to numerous studies, including those for heart failures and transplantation, kidney failures, and for various lung conditions such as Cystic Fibrosis and COPD.
One particularly impactful application of Ng and his research team is the development of biomarker panels of genes and proteins in blood to diagnose rejection in transplanted patients.
These biomarker panels have enabled an international trial involving hundreds of patients in Canada, the U.S., Australia and India. The work has led to two novel blood tests with U.S. patents. Both tests are currently being assessed by Canadian Blood Services, for use in making decisions on regulatory approval of applications to Health Canada and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“We are very pleased with these successes, not only insights into transplant biology, but also for less invasive and less expensive procedures for patients,” says Ng.
Additional Recognition
In 2010 Ng’s computational team at the PROOF Centre received a Best Practices Award from Bio-IT World, the largest organization in the U.S. for health informatics research and development.
Established in 2003, the Bio-IT World’s Best Practices Awards Program recognizes those organizations for their outstanding innovations and excellence in the use of technologies, practices, and novel business strategies that will advance drug discovery, development, biomedical research, and clinical trials. The PROOF Centre was the first Canadian university-based organization to win the award.
The Genome BC Award for Scientific Excellence Award selection criteria is based on:
- Scientific contribution to advancing the relevant fields of genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, or systems biology
- Multiple successful and key efforts utilizing original techniques or research methods in the relevant fields
- Monumental work or ground-breaking discovery or innovation
- Commitment to collaborative and interdisciplinary research
- Technical and/or non-technical scientific achievement and/or challenge
- New successfully executed research of national and/or international importance
- Proven outcomes, benefits and/or extraordinary results and/or basis of implemented of commercialized innovative solution