Marina Sirota, PhD

Professor In Residence
Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute (BCHSI)
Research Description: 

Marina is currently a Professor and the Acting Director at the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute at UCSF. Prior to that she has worked as a Senior Research Scientist at Pfizer where she focused on developing Precision Medicine strategies in drug discovery. She completed her PhD in Biomedical Informatics at Stanford University. Dr. Sirota’s research experience in translational bioinformatics spans nearly 20 years during which she has co-authored over 170 scientific publications. Her research interests lie in developing computational integrative methods and applying these approaches in the context of disease diagnostics and therapeutics with a special focus on women’s health. The Sirota laboratory is funded by NIA, NLM, NIAMS, Pfizer, March of Dimes and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. As a young leader in the field, she has been awarded the AMIA Young Investigator Award in 2017. She leads the UCSF March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at UCSF as well as co-directs ENACT, a center to study precision medicine for endometriosis. Dr. Sirota also is the founding director of the AI4ALL program at UCSF, with the goal of introducing high school girls to applications of AI and machine learning in biomedicine.

Primary Thematic Area: 
Human Genetics
Secondary Thematic Area: 
Immunology
Research Summary: 
The Sirota Lab aims to develop computational integrative methods to inform disease diagnostics and therapeutics. Our goal is to integrate different types of omics and clinical data to better understand the role of the immune system in disease.
Mentorship Development: 

11/10/20    Optimizing the Efficiency of Your Lab

Websites

Featured Publications: 

Discovery and preclinical validation of drug indications using compendia of public gene expression data.

Science translational medicine

Sirota M, Dudley JT, Kim J, Chiang AP, Morgan AA, Sweet-Cordero A, Sage J, Butte AJ

Computational repositioning of the anticonvulsant topiramate for inflammatory bowel disease.

Science translational medicine

Dudley JT, Sirota M, Shenoy M, Pai RK, Roedder S, Chiang AP, Morgan AA, Sarwal MM, Pasricha PJ, Butte AJ

B cell exchange across the blood-brain barrier in multiple sclerosis.

The Journal of clinical investigation

von Büdingen HC, Kuo TC, Sirota M, van Belle CJ, Apeltsin L, Glanville J, Cree BA, Gourraud PA, Schwartzburg A, Huerta G, Telman D, Sundar PD, Casey T, Cox DR, Hauser SL

Immunoglobulin class-switched B cells form an active immune axis between CNS and periphery in multiple sclerosis.

Science translational medicine

Palanichamy A, Apeltsin L, Kuo TC, Sirota M, Wang S, Pitts SJ, Sundar PD, Telman D, Zhao LZ, Derstine M, Abounasr A, Hauser SL, von Büdingen HC

Characterizing pre-transplant and post-transplant kidney rejection risk by B cell immune repertoire sequencing.

Nature communications

Pineda S, Sigdel TK, Liberto JM, Vincenti F, Sirota M, Sarwal MM

Meta-Analysis of Maternal and Fetal Transcriptomic Data Elucidates the Role of Adaptive and Innate Immunity in Preterm Birth.

Frontiers in immunology

Vora B, Wang A, Kosti I, Huang H, Paranjpe I, Woodruff TJ, MacKenzie T, Sirota M