WEHI Wednesday Seminar hosted by Dr Saskia Freytag

Joel Moffet
PhD Student – Brain Cancer Research Laboratory – Cancer division

(This is a PhD Completion Seminar)

Creating a Multi-Omic Atlas of IDH-Mutant Glioma

Davis Auditorium

Join via SLIDO enter code #WEHIWednesday

Including Q&A session

Gliomas are invasive brain cancers with a five-year survival rate of just 22%. In lower grade patients, Isocitrate Dehydrogenase (IDH) mutation results in the production of oncometabolite 2-hydroxyglutarate (2-HG), leading to heterogeneous and metabolically rewired tumours. In contrast to IDH-wildtype tumours, which are known to organise spatially along hypoxic gradients in the tumour tissue, hypoxia is rarely present in IDH-mutant glioma – suggesting other factors are responsible for the spatial organisation of these tumours.

In his PhD, Joel investigated whether spatially altered metabolite abundance could be an organising principle in IDH-mutant glioma. To enable this, Joel developed strategies for multi-omic integration, downstream analysis, and 3D interpolation. He applied these methods to a spatial atlas of n = 26 IDH-mutant glioma samples, profiling both spatial transcriptomics (Xenium) and metabolomics (MALDI-MSI) across serial sections of tissue. Through analysis of primary, recurrent, and matched longitudinal samples, this integrated resource reveals distinct niches driven by metabolic programs associated with treatment response. In his PhD Completion Seminar, Joel will demonstrate how these findings establish metabolism as a fundamental pillar of tumour organisation in IDH-mutant glioma.

Joel is a final year PhD Student in the Brain Cancer Research Lab at WEHI, whose project combines patient tissue, animal models & bioinformatics to comprehensively characterise multi-dimensional brain cancer development. Joel contributed to a neuronal developmental atlas during his Honours at the Harry Perkins Institute under the supervision of Dr Saskia Freytag, before moving to WEHI in 2022 to apply his skills to brain cancer. 

All welcome!