Spatial Life Strands

Dr. Vivek Rathi (MD, MHSc, FRCPA)

Group Medical Director & Molecular Pathologist vivek@lifestrandsgx.com Dr. Vivek Rathi is a molecular and anatomical pathologist, and a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia. After obtaining his FRCPA in 2012, Vivek worked for 8 years as a staff pathologist at St. Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, where in 2014 he established one of the very first NATA accredited molecular laboratories in Australia offering next generation sequencing tests for cancer patients. Before joining Spatial LifeStrands Genomics in early 2022, Vivek worked at Monash Health, a quaternary referral centre in Melbourne for two years as the Director of one of the largest Diagnostic Genomics Department in Australia. At Monash Health, Vivek was instrumental in the introduction of multiple highly sought-after molecular tests. Besides his responsibilities of clinical governance and staff supervision, Vivek has keen interest in molecular assay design, validation, and quality control. His dual qualification as an anatomical and molecular pathologist enables him to tackle high level translational research challenges including spatial genomics, understanding complex interactions between tumour and microenvironment, disease heterogeneity, gene expression and cancer pathway profiling. Dr. Rathi is an adjunct senior lecturer at Monash University and has an on-going involvement in many clinical translational research projects.

Ufuk Degirmenci

Scientific Officer ufuk@lifestrandsgx.com Dr. Degirmenci joined Dr. Sun Lei in the Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disease Unit at Duke-NUS after receiving his B.Sc. from Bilkent University in Turkey. He has discovered a novel long noncoding RNA that can regulate insulin response in adipose tissue. Additionally, he contributed to research on RNA binding proteins and the effect of magnetic fields on the browning of adipocytes. He completed his postdoctoral studies at the National Cancer Center of Singapore’s Cell Signaling Laboratory, where he also wrote a few articles on the Ras/RAF/MEK pathways. He is presently the department head for Spatial LifeStrands Genomic’s spatial genomics division.

Rushiraj Manchiganti

Bioinformatics Manager rushiraj@lifestrandsgx.com Rushiraj has more than 10 years experience in Next Generation Sequencing and Analysis with a graduate degree in Engineering. He has worked at several leading NGS Service providers in the past like MedGenome Labs and Genotypic Technology in India. He has expertise in developing analysis pipelines for a variety of applications like RNA-Seq, WGS, WES and ctDNA. As Bioinformatics Manager, he continues to work towards developing analysis pipelines for spatial transcriptomics, scRNA and WES projects. He is passionate about connecting scientific technology with disease relevance and believes that spatial transcriptomics will lead to great advancements in tumour diagnosis and prognosis in the future. Spatial and Single cell transcriptomics will increase our understanding towards tumour biology and help in deciphering possible targets for predictive and therapeutic applications.