George Vasmatzis PhD

George Vasmatzis, Ph.D., is the co-director of the Biomarker Discovery Program within the Center for Individualized Medicine. In addition to earning a doctorate in biomedical engineering, Dr. Vasmatzis has acquired experience in diverse disciplines, including bioinformatics, molecular biology, and computational biology. His research team consists of bioinformatics specialists, molecular biologists, epidemiologists, and pathologists.

Dr. Vasmatzis' laboratory has demonstrated success in the discovery and translation of several biomarkers as well as in developing evidence-based models that should help clinicians stratify patients with cancer in order to provide each individual with the appropriate care. With the recent advances in next-generation sequencing technologies, the laboratory has become engaged in massive sequencing to scan the genome of cancer cells for abnormalities that can be used for clinical purposes such as diagnosis and stratification of patients for optimal treatment. Published papers in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Cancer Research, and Blood further demonstrate the lab's discovery, validation, and translation capabilities.

Dr. Vasmatzis' research program has a long-standing collaboration with Rashid Bashir, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in the development of sensors based on nanopores to quantify minute amounts of DNA molecules. This collaboration has yielded several publications describing the physical properties of these silicon-based devices. Recently, Dr. Vasmatzis and Dr. Bashir published a proof-of-concept study that demonstrates the use of nanopores for the detection and quantification of methylated DNA, while discriminating from identical nonmethylated DNA molecules. This publication generated considerable interest from Mayo Clinic clinicians, who now want to test this technology in the early detection of colon cancer using stool samples.