Lecturer Serghei Mangul: "Open data and bioinformatics methods - a powerful tool for novel discoveries"

Bioinformatics and open data enable data-driven medicine is the generic title of the third teleconference organized by the Research Department of the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INCMS) of Nicolae Testemitanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Moldova. The event is part of the State of the Art Lectures series and has been held in collaboration with Serghei Mangul, PhD, Assistant Professor at the Department of Clinical Pharmacy, School of Pharmacy, University of Southern California, United States.

At the opening of the teleconference, professor Emil Ceban, Rector of the University, mentioned that these scientific events became a tradition at the institution, and this meeting signified new opportunities and development perspectives in the research activity of Nicolae Testemitanu University.

"In reality, bioinformatics is becoming an important standard and an international trend, which offers greater credibility to research in the field of medical and biomedical sciences", stressed professor Ceban. At the same time, the rector highly appreciated the openness of lecturer Serghei Mangul to give this lecture for young researchers and share his interest in the field of bioinformatics, genomics, immunogenomics, bioinformatics education, etc.

Academician Stanislav Groppa, Vice-Rector for Research, director of INCMS, and moderator of the event, reiterated that State of the Art Lectures conference series brought new visions in the research area, and it could be noticed that under the project, every month, on regular basis, a foreign guest offered the most interesting and innovative presentations for both teachers and students, resident doctors and doctoral students.

According to Vice-Rector Groppa, bioinformatics represents an interdisciplinary field that combines mathematical, statistical, and computer sciences with their application in medicine. This science is especially useful for our country, as it does not require costs, only knowledge of specific software programs and analysis of lots of data.

Serghei Mangul, the protagonist of the event, presented a series of analyses, strategies and researches concerning data-based medicine and explained that bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary science that deals with the development of methods and software tools, which contribute to understanding data of biological importance and is intended primarily for young genetics researchers. This science is used in personalized medicine to analyze human genome sequence data, or gene expression, and to determine mutations or gene variants that may affect the patient's response to a particular drug or may alter the prognosis of a disease. The lecturer also states that bioinformatics helps to establish the diagnosis of disease through the application of information technologies and informatics in a biomedical context in order to study, analyze and process genetic, molecular and clinical information.

According to lecturer Serghei Mangul, computational data-driven research focuses on developing and applying computational methods across various types of omics datasets. "Such research is performed in a new type of laboratory, often called a dry laboratory. Our team designs, develops and applies novel and robust data driven computational approaches that will accelerate the diffusion of genomics and biomedical data into translational research and education", maintains the researcher, emphasizing that open data and bioinformatics methods represent a powerful tool for new discoveries, suitable for countries with limited resources.

At the end of the conference, academician Stanislav Groppa expressed his gratitude to Assistant Professor Serghei Mangul for the transfer of knowledge in the field of bioinformatics, and mentioned that in the next period new bridges of collaboration would be established in this field.