Olivier Elemento, Ph.D.

Professor of Physiology and Biophysics

  • Walter B. Wriston Research Scholar
  • Professor of Computational Genomics in Computational Biomedicine and Associate Director of the Institute for Computational Biomedicine
  • Director of the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine
  • Associate Director of the Institute for Computational Biomedicine

646-962-5726

1305 York Avenue, Room Y-13.13
New York, NY 10021

Lab website: http://physiology.med.cornell.edu/faculty/elemento/lab/

Techniques

Research Areas

Member of:

Research Summary:

The Elemento lab combines Big Data analytics with experimentation to develop entirely new ways to help prevent, diagnose, understand, treat and ultimately cure cancer. Our research involves routine use of ultrafast DNA sequencing, proteomics, high-performance computing, mathematical modeling, and artificial intelligence/machine learning.

More specifically, we are working on :

  • Systems biology of regulatory networks in normal and malignant cells, with a strong focus on blood cancers (lymphomas and leukemias). We use ChIP-seq, RNA-seq, computational modeling to investigate how genes are regulated in cancer cells and how gene regulation in cancer cells differs from normal cells.
  • Cancer genomics and precision medicine. Using novel computational algorithms, we seek to identify new cancer mutations and understand why and where cancer mutations occur. We work on determining whether 3D chromatin architecture predicts where mutations are most likely to occur.
  • Epigenomics of cancer. Genes coding for proteins that modify, maintain or read the epigenome (DNA methylation and histone modifications) and are among the most frequently mutated genes in cancer. We use high-throughput experimental approaches and pattern detection techniques to investigate what these genes do and the genomewide epigenomic patterns they mediate.
  • Tumor genome evolution, anticancer drug resistance. Cancer is a fundamentally evolutionary disease. Using high-throughput sequencing, we are investigating how the tumor genome (and epigenome) evolves in time and particularly upon drug treatment.
  • Early cancer detection using machine learning. We use advanced machine learning approaches (artificial intelligence techniques) to detect cancer as early as possible and help guide treatment accordingly. One of our algorithms for thyroid cancer detection, based on Support Vector Machines, was recently licensed by Prolias Technologies.
  • Development of innovative computational approaches for analysis of high-throughput experiments (metabolomics, proteomics, high-throughout sequencing, etc) performed on cancer cells. For example we have developed ChIPseeqer, a broadly used ChIPseq data analysis framework.

 

Recent Publications:

  1. Kyei, I, Bea, VJ, Gyan, KK, Adjei, E, Stonaker, B, Bekele, M et al.. Oncologic Anthropology and the African Diaspora: Twenty-Year Anniversary Report, International Center for the Study of Breast Cancer Subtypes (ICSBCS). Ann Surg Oncol. 2025; :. doi: 10.1245/s10434-025-17807-7. PubMed PMID:40914775 .
  2. Jenkins, P, Harrison, R, Bedrick, S, Karstens, L, Bridge2AI-Voice Consortium, Hersh, W et al.. Voice as a biomarker: exploratory analysis for benign and malignant vocal fold lesions. Front Digit Health. 2025;7 :1609811. doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2025.1609811. PubMed PMID:40873766 PubMed Central PMC12378753.
  3. Ovejero, S, Devin, J, Alibert, L, Soun, C, Lin, YL, Dutrieux, L et al.. Synthetic Lethal Combinations of DNA Repair Inhibitors and Genotoxic Agents to Target High-Risk Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma. Hematol Oncol. 2025;43 (5):e70131. doi: 10.1002/hon.70131. PubMed PMID:40847617 PubMed Central PMC12374179.
  4. Nazha, A, Elemento, O, Ahuja, S, Lam, BD, Miles, M, Shouval, R et al.. Artificial Intelligence in Hematology. Blood. 2025; :. doi: 10.1182/blood.2025029876. PubMed PMID:40845137 .
  5. Cheng, AP, Rusinek, I, Sossin, A, Widman, AJ, Meiri, E, Krieger, G et al.. Paired plus-minus sequencing is an ultra-high throughput and accurate method for dual strand sequencing of DNA molecules. bioRxiv. 2025; :. doi: 10.1101/2025.08.11.669689. PubMed PMID:40832334 PubMed Central PMC12363824.
  6. Akinsanya, K, AlQuraishi, M, Boija, A, Chodera, J, Cichońska, A, Ghassemi, M et al.. Redefining druggable targets with artificial intelligence. Nat Biotechnol. 2025;43 (9):1416-1418. doi: 10.1038/s41587-025-02770-1. PubMed PMID:40830262 .
  7. Roshal, M, Kong, IY, Dinalankara, W, Reichel, JB, Teater, M, Binder, B et al.. Transcriptome sequencing of Hodgkin lymphoma Hodgkin and Reed-Stenberg cells reveals escape from NK cell recognition and an unfolded protein response. bioRxiv. 2025; :. doi: 10.1101/2025.08.05.667241. PubMed PMID:40799573 PubMed Central PMC12340810.
  8. Hissong, E, Bhinder, B, Kim, J, Ohara, K, Ravichandran, H, Assaad, MA et al.. Integrative transcriptomic and single-cell protein characterization of colorectal carcinoma delineates distinct tumor immune microenvironments associated with overall survival. Pathol Res Pract. 2025;273 :156150. doi: 10.1016/j.prp.2025.156150. PubMed PMID:40743578 .
  9. Devi, KSP, Wang, E, Jaiswal, A, Konieczny, P, Kim, TG, Nirschl, CJ et al.. PD-1 is requisite for skin TRM cell formation and specification by TGFβ. Nat Immunol. 2025;26 (8):1339-1351. doi: 10.1038/s41590-025-02228-1. PubMed PMID:40730902 PubMed Central PMC12307224.
  10. Chen, HJ, Gardner, EE, Shah, Y, Zhang, K, Thakur, A, Zhang, C et al.. Metastatic small cell lung cancer arises from TP53/RB1-deficient and MYC overproduction hESC-derived PNECs. Elife. 2025;13 :. doi: 10.7554/eLife.93170. PubMed PMID:40694497 PubMed Central PMC12283072.
  11. Rajendran, S, Rehani, E, Phu, W, Zhan, Q, Malmsten, JE, Meseguer, M et al.. A foundational model for in vitro fertilization trained on 18 million time-lapse images. Nat Commun. 2025;16 (1):6235. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-61116-2. PubMed PMID:40645954 PubMed Central PMC12254344.
  12. Nath, S, Claridge, S, Granados, GL, Al Assaad, M, Park, E, Cavallo, JA et al.. Unlocking the therapeutic potential of rigosertib as a selective therapy for ovarian cancer. Cell Rep Med. 2025;6 (7):102218. doi: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2025.102218. PubMed PMID:40628262 PubMed Central PMC12281429.
  13. Bhinder, B, Friedl, V, Sethuraman, S, Risso, D, Chiotti, KE, Mashl, RJ et al.. Pan-cancer immune and stromal deconvolution predicts clinical outcomes and mutation profiles. Sci Rep. 2025;15 (1):23921. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-09075-y. PubMed PMID:40615649 PubMed Central PMC12227561.
  14. Park, J, De Gregorio, R, Hissong, E, Ozcelik, E, Bartelo, N, Dezem, FS et al.. The Spatial Atlas of Human Anatomy (SAHA): A Multimodal Subcellular-Resolution Reference Across Human Organs. bioRxiv. 2025; :. doi: 10.1101/2025.06.16.658716. PubMed PMID:40611896 PubMed Central PMC12224548.
  15. Blatter, A, Gallois, H, Evangelista, E, Bensoussan, Y, Bridge2AI-Voice Consortium, Bélisle-Pipon, JC et al.. "Voice is the New Blood": a discourse analysis of voice AI health-tech start-up websites. Front Digit Health. 2025;7 :1568159. doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2025.1568159. PubMed PMID:40510414 PubMed Central PMC12158947.
  16. Honigsberg, R, Cruz, T, Yoffe, L, Tang, MS, Dicle, O, Markowitz, G et al.. Tumor-specific draining lymph node CD8 T cells orchestrate an anti-tumor response to neoadjuvant PD-1 immune checkpoint blockade. bioRxiv. 2025; :. doi: 10.1101/2025.04.27.650862. PubMed PMID:40501950 PubMed Central PMC12154853.
  17. Anibal, J, Doctor, R, Boyer, M, Newberry, K, De Santiago, I, Awan, S et al.. Transformers for rapid detection of airway stenosis and stridor. Sci Rep. 2025;15 (1):15394. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-99369-y. PubMed PMID:40316652 PubMed Central PMC12048665.
  18. Moothedan, E, Boyer, M, Watts, S, Abdel-Aty, Y, Ghosh, S, Rameau, A et al.. The Bridge2AI-voice application: initial feasibility study of voice data acquisition through mobile health. Front Digit Health. 2025;7 :1514971. doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2025.1514971. PubMed PMID:40302934 PubMed Central PMC12037532.
  19. Cheng, AP, Widman, AJ, Arora, A, Rusinek, I, Sossin, A, Rajagopalan, S et al.. Error-corrected flow-based sequencing at whole-genome scale and its application to circulating cell-free DNA profiling. Nat Methods. 2025;22 (5):973-981. doi: 10.1038/s41592-025-02648-9. PubMed PMID:40217113 PubMed Central PMC12077166.
  20. Bélisle-Pipon, JC, Anibal, J, Bahr, R, Bedrick, S, Coleman, O, Dorr, D et al.. Interactive Panel Summaries of the 2024 Voice AI Symposium. Front Digit Health. 2025;7 :1484521. doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2025.1484521. PubMed PMID:40212896 PubMed Central PMC11983451.
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