Mouadh Barbirou, MSc, PhD
Research Associate
Contact Information
1025 Walnut Street
Suite 727
Philadelphia, PA 19107
215-503-6120
215-503-9506 fax
Research Associate
Education
PhD, Molecular Biology and Biotechnologies Pasteur Institute of Tunis, Tunis, Tunisia - 2021
MS, Molecular Genetics and Biotechnologies University Tunis El Manar, Tunis, Tunisia - 2016
B.Sc., Biology (Minor in Molecular and Cellular Biology) University Tunis El Manar, Tunis, Tunisia - 2016
Fellowship
Research Fellow, Cancer Genetics and Bioinformatics, School of Medicine, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO - 2021
Postdoctoral Training
Postdoctoral Associate, Molecular Oncology, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA - 2022
Most Recent Peer-Reviewed Publications
- Altered expression of cytokines, chemokines, growth factors, and soluble receptors in patients with colorectal cancer, and correlation with treatment outcome
- Variant Characterization of a Representative Large Pedigree Suggests “Variant Risk Clusters” Convey Varying Predisposition of Risk to Lynch Syndrome
- Evaluation of cfDNA as an early detection assay for dense tissue breast cancer
- Somatic mutation variant analysis in rural, resectable non‐small cell lung carcinoma patients
- Single Circulating-Tumor-Cell-Targeted Sequencing to Identify Somatic Variants in Liquid Biopsies in Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Patients
Awards
- Scholarship from the Ministry of Higher Education Tunisia for internship funding, 2018
- Scholarship from the Center for Biomedical Informatics, Univ of Missouri Columbia, IRCCS, 2018
Research & Clinical Interest
Digestive Cancer Project (DC): Investigating novel molecular/genetic biomarkers associated with digestive cancers. Develop test biomarkers from novel digestive cancer molecular mechanisms and investigate these biomarkers for diagnostics, prognostics and therapeutic efficacy.
Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Project (NSCLC): Investigation of novel pipeline to isolate and characterize Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) from patients with different stages of NSCLC and controls using RareCyte technology. Defining the CTC’s mutations’ functional role in the development of NSCLC and their potential as risk, diagnostic, prognostic or outcome monitoring biomarkers or as a companion genetic test to a given treatment.
Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA): Implementation of a tool for genetic profile testing of plasma-derived cfDNA as biomarkers of prognostic and monitoring response to treatment in patients with different stages of BC. Testing the potential of ctDNA as early diagnostic biomarkers by determining the somatic mutations corresponding to the real time tumor in the cfDNA, to avoid potential confounding of cfDNA released by the biopsied cells into the bloodstream.
Functional analysis of candidate genes in primary T cell immunodeficiencies: Identify disease-causing mutations by lossof-function analysis using antisense morpholino oligonucleotides to knockdown expression of the candidate gene in transgenic zebrafish; then test the mutation function by re-expressing the mutant vs. wild type human ortholog to determine which can compensate for the loss of the endogenous zebrafish gene. Given the knockdown results in zebrafish and mouse models of the patient mutations will be generated to study the mechanisms of impaired T cell development and to understand the mechanism whereby the mutation impairs T cell development.