The long-term objective of the Ideker Lab is to create artificially intelligent, mechanistic models of cancer and neurodegenerative diseases for translation of patient data to precision diagnosis and treatment. We seek to advance this goal by addressing fundamental questions in the field: What are the genetic and molecular networks that promote disease, and how do we best chart these? How do we use knowledge of these networks in intelligent systems for predicting the effects of genotype on phenotype?

Click an icon to learn more about each research area:

Meet the Team

The Ideker Laboratory has welcomed many distinguished researchers over the years — ranging from undergraduates to visiting scientists. Click buttons below to view Dr. Ideker’s profile and meet our past and present lab members. 

Open Projects and Positions

The Ideker Laboratory is in continual open recruitment for excellent postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, and software engineers. 

News

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Epigenetic age can fluctuate by five years in a single day

“It’s a study I’ve been waiting to see for a long time.” – Trey Ideker

Epigenetic changes—in particular, DNA methylation, which can regulate gene expression—are thought to accumulate over years or decades, “but not over short periods,” says Art Petronis, a chrono-epigeneticist with dual appointments at the University of Toronto, Canada, and Vilnius University in Lithuania. But in a recent study in Aging Cell, Petronis and coauthors found that epigenetic age actually fluctuates throughout the course of a day.

PNAS: Coenzyme Q10 trapping in mitochondrial complex I underlies Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy - Doheny Eye InstituteAmy McDermott
May 3, 2024

      Simulated Chemistry: New AI Platform Designs Tomorrow’s Cancer Drugs

      The new platform helped UC San Diego scientists synthesize 32 potential multi-target cancer drug

      Explore the advancements at UC San Diego where our innovative AI platform is revolutionizing cancer drug development. Dive deeper into how this technology is setting new standards in drug design and pharmaceutical sciences.

      Learn more about our work here.

      “AI-guided drug discovery has become a very active area in industry, but unlike the methods being developed in companies, we’re making our technology open source and accessible to anybody who wants to use it.”

      Trey Ideker, Ph.D.

          Study co-author Katherine Licon, photographed here at the bench, is lab manager for the Ideker Lab at UC San Diego. Photo by Erik Jepsen/UC San Diego.
          Spotlight

          UC San Diego School of Medicine uses AI to predict which drugs to use to treat cancer patients

          Discover our recent publication highlighted by four simultaneous news coverage articles. Delve into an informative interview with Dr. Ideker and Abbie Black from CBS News

          Related Press: 


              Spotlight on Cancer Cell Map Initiative
              A New Map
              Smartly Done
              Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2023

              Congratulations to Dr. Yue Qin, Ideker Lab Graduate, for getting two major awards! Yue was selected to join the Forbes 30 Under 30, Class of 2023 (read more here and here) and also awarded the 2023 UCSD Chancellor’s Dissertation Medal for the Jacobs School of Engineering.

              Dr. Ideker is a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher two years in a row, in both 2020 and 2021. This highly anticipated annual list identifies researchers who demonstrated significant influence in their chosen field or fields through the publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade.  View the complete 2021 Highly Cited Researchers list.

              Research Centers & Affiliates