Core C: Biostatistics and Data Integration Core (BDI Core)

ABSTRACT Precision medicine is an emerging integrative approach for disease prevention, early detection and treatment that takes into account individual variability in genetics, medical history, environmental exposures, and lifestyle. Effective precision medicine requires the integration and analysis of complex clinical and molecular data. The

BDI Core will help researchers take advantage of state-of-the-art computational resources for the study of SLE. The coordination of different data types – clinical, genomics, cellular, and molecular – throughout the process of data generation and analysis is a critical function that will be accomplished by interactions between the Core and

the Project teams. The goal of the Biostatistics and Data Integration (BDI) Core is to provide researchers with state-of-the-art computational approaches for the study of SLE. Directed by leading experts in computational biology and bioinformatics, the BDI Core will provide investigators with assistance in study design; bioinformatics

analysis of clinical and imaging features and bulk- and single-cell omics data; data integration; and data dissemination across the two proposed projects. The BDI Core will capitalize on our collective experience analyzing clinical, molecular, immune, and metabolic data in the context of autoimmune disease; our expertise

in multi-modal data analysis methods; and the infrastructure of the UCSF Data Library to support the data management and analytic efforts of this proposal. In order to provide comprehensive support for data management and analysis, the BDI Core will; (1) provide necessary bioinformatic processing and statistical

learning support for both projects; and (2) perform integrative analyses to power the multi-modal nature of each project as well as joint cross-project dataset analyses; (3) establish a robust and secure data storage system shared across project teams using the UCDL infrastructure. To advance SLE research in the context of precision

medicine, the BDI Core will work in collaboration with the project leaders and investigators to provide tools and workflows for the analysis and integration of high quality genomic, molecular and clinical data. With those goals in mind we propose the following tasks: 1) Provide statistical analysis and bioinformatic support for testing project

hypotheses relevant to immune phenotypes and brain functioning in SLE remission. 2) Integrate multi-modal data to identify defining states of SLE remission based on immune and neurological phenotypes and 3) Develop and maintain a centralized system of data management and sharing using the UCSF Data Library. The BDI Core

will bring together researchers from different backgrounds and enable investigators whose work can benefit from access to state-of-the-art computational technologies and approaches, with an overall goal of advancing precision medicine in rheumatology.