The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF) unveiled its new Center for Biomedical Data Sciences on Wednesday. It provides the independent, nonprofit biomedical research institute with computing and data analysis capabilities to support scientists in researching areas like heart disease, cancer and autoimmune diseases.
The center was made possible by a $1.9 million congressional funding request that OMRF President Andrew Weyrich said was initiated by the late U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe. A $300,000 grant from the McCasland Foundation, which focuses on funding areas like education, helped complete the project.
“A single experiment can produce data equivalent to a spreadsheet of 200 million columns and three billion rows,” Weyrich said. “To take advantage of every piece of that information, we must have specialized tools and a new generation of computing power.”
The center is located in a former laboratory space and is designed to maximize interface among OMRF's five research programs. Its founding director is biostatistician and geneticist Courtney Montgomery, who started her scientific career at OMRF three decades ago.
“When we found out about funding for the Center for Biomedical Data Sciences in 2021, an initiative within OMRF began to prioritize the application of cutting-edge technology to the amazing science that was already happening,” Montgomery said. “ … It’s truly an amazing opportunity and opens a new era in research at the OMRF.”
Christopher Bottoms, a senior bioinformatics trainer and analyst, and Zachary Hettinger, an assistant professor, showed how they’re already collaborating, using muscle cells from mice.
Hettinger is working in OMRF’s Aging & Metabolism Research Program with a guiding framework of how healthy muscles lead to healthy aging. He said with aging, cell populations can transform to become more pathological, contributing to muscle atrophy.
“Our underlying hypothesis here is that there's actually subpopulations within this. It's not necessarily that one cell said, you know what, ‘I'm going to transform and become the villain,’” Hettinger said. “It's going to be more so that there is going to be a shift in the good guys to the bad guys.”
Hettinger said they have a huge data set with a mix of “good and bad guys,” and through this effort, they can work on splitting it apart to find unique signatures in cells. The hope is to take this data out of the computational space and see if they can manipulate and promote beneficial cells and quiet down the ones becoming more pathological with age.
“The idea is, if we understand the markers for the good stem cells, we can take a blood sample or maybe tissue sample from an individual and identify just the good ones and multiply those and inject them back into an injury site,” Bottoms said. “So it would be their own cells going back into their injury site, and it would help with healing.”
The center is also designed to host one-on-one trainings, seminars and in-depth courses, benefiting not only researchers at OMRF but others at partner institutions. Bottoms said, for example, the center can help with using computer scripts and debugging.
“If every lab had their own bioinformatics person, that would be the ideal,” Bottoms said. “But … we're kind of a shared resource. … Instead of each project having hired someone like us, then we can help.”
U.S. Rep. Stephanie Bice – who OMRF said was instrumental in the funding request alongside U.S. Rep. Tom Cole – spoke at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the center. Bice said it will cement OMRF as a leader in the latest research methods and serve as a hub for collaborations.
“I'm really excited and honored that I could provide support to this project and provide our state with crucial scientific infrastructure to accelerate the process of developing new treatments for Oklahomans,” Bice said. “And I can't wait to see what you all accomplish in this space today and into the future.”
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