Cedars-Sinai names Liu director of bioinformatics

Zhenqiu Liu joined Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles as director of bioinformatics in the department of medicine's hematology/oncology division on Feb. 18.

Liu, 48, was previously associate professor of bioinformatics at the department of epidemiology and public health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Greenebaum Cancer Center. His research at the Baltimore institution included bioinformatics, computational biology and big data mining. At Cedars-Sinai, he will focus on survivorship predictions, biomarker identification and computational techniques.

“Bioinformatics is a rapidly growing and exciting field in medicine,” Dr. Steven Piantadosi, director of the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute at Cedars-Sinai, said in a release.

Scientists in the field study the way genes and gene sequences respond to specific therapies in order to create an optimal and customized treatment plan based on a patient's genetic makeup.

“Patients expect therapies and drugs to work for their specific disease, without a need to or desire to understand the mechanics of how the treatment actually works,” Dr. Robert Figlin, professor of medicine and biomedical sciences, director of the hematology/oncology division and deputy director of the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Center Institute, said in the release. “Liu and colleagues will be responsible for dissecting the 'how' of research and translating it to patient care.”

Follow Rachel Landen on Twitter: @MHrlanden