Ben Curran’s role in Genomics Aotearoa is at the juncture of research and clinical genomics. He is a research fellow working on the Rakeiora project, which is funded by MBIE through Genomics Aotearoa. And he is one of a small number of bioinformaticians working in precision medicine in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Genomics provide us with huge opportunities for understanding biology– each sequenced genome contains a wealth of information, particularly around genetic risks and predisposition to inherited conditions. For humans, understanding more about inherited characteristics offers opportunities to target, manage and treat genetic disorders - making use of the ever-growing wealth of genomic data is one of the fastest growing areas of research globally.
Ben’s primary focus is on building systems to help improve treatment for people with cancer. These systems must be built in a manner so that they are accessible and able to engage with everyone. Along with the Rakeiora project team, he is working to incorporate Te Ao Māori into the design, so that it will serve the needs of everyone in Aotearoa New Zealand.
These are early days for precision medicine – systematically working through data from the genome of a cancer patient to identify individual genetic variants is time consuming and difficult.
“It is hard enough to understand what variants are relevant in the populations of other countries. Without understanding the variants that are and aren’t relevant in our own population is it becomes even harder to apply knowledge gained overseas here,” Ben said.
“The goal of my work is to be able understand and provide what researchers need to understand to explain some differences in disease susceptibility and how people react to treatment, which in turn is critical to helping our clinicians work with patients to target treatments more effectively.”
Getting there
Ben describes his journey to and within bioinformatics as ... markovian. “It’s been a stochastic chain of events, each of which were plausible given what came immediately before. It wasn’t a journey that could be planned though.”
“After a BSc in Computer Science, I went to England for a few years and worked for the BBC. I came back, embarked on half a philosophy degree and a Masters in Biology, and ran a small vodka distillery for a few years.”
“I completed my PhD bioinformatics at The University of Auckland in 2017. It was on the interaction of two organisms (Kiwifruit and PSA) at the genetic level as a pathogen attacked the host.”
“I then worked for a start-up developing gene signatures for prostate cancer for diagnostic purposes for a short period of time, before moving to the NETwork group at FMHS to work on paediatric cancers, then getting side-tracked into genetic curation and designing precision medicine platforms.”
I’ve worked across many facets of bioinformatics. Technically, my current areas of expertise are in bioinformatics, cancer genetics, specifically paediatric cancers, and precision medicine. At least once every three or four weeks though, I sit down absolutely dumbfounded at something biology is doing, that it really, really shouldn’t be able to do. In genomics and bioinformatics there is always something to learn. Which is a large part of the reason I am still here.”
Find out more about Rakeiora here