Zarko Manojlovic

Dr. Manojlovic in an Assistant Professor in the department of Translational Genomics and the Director of the newly formed Keck Genomics Platform (KGP) at the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California. In 2017, with support of Keck Medicine led the creation of the state-of-the-art next generation sequencing center with emphasis on multi-disciplinary collaborative projects. KGP is a service platform designed to support Keck School of Medicine, greater USC, and its affiliates with a complete, high throughput next generation sequencing ecosystem that can support projects at all stages of development. KGP provides support in high quality sample processing, library constructions, and high throughput next generation sequencing of RNA, whole genome, exome, bi-sulfide, methylome, esoteric, and custom targeted assays by utilizing the Illumina platform such as MiSeq and NovaSeq. KGP also leverages high performance computational resources with in-house built pipelines and information management systems vital for a complete research-based precision medicine platform. KGP’s major mission is to build a collaborative environment and provide team-driven research support within the scope of the next generation technologies to ultimately drive advances in translational genomics and pave a way towards personalized medicine.

Dr. Manojlovic earned his Ph.D. from Florida State University College of Medicine with a focus on delineating clinically actionable fibro-proliferative mechanisms in liver fibrosis and developmental disorders linked to ciliopathies. He then went on to complete his postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of Dr. John D.Carpten. Under Dr. Carpten’s mentorship and a fruitful opportunity of co-mentoring by Drs. Jeff Trent, Jonathan Keats, Winnie Liang, and David W. Craig, resulted in Dr. Manojlovic processing over 250Tbs of raw sequencing data on studies focusing on a wide spectrum of somatic landscapes across melanoma, prostate cancer, multiple myeloma as part of the large Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation Personalized Medicine CoMMpaSS study, colorectal cancer, pediatric sarcomas in collaboration with Dr. Troy A. McEachron and Children Hospital of Orange County, B-cell lymphoma, breast, kidney, prostate, and bladder cancers. He also worked on health disparities research and tumor population heterogeneity. In addition, Dr. Manojlovic helped build the laboratory component that is utilized to support the new Department of Translational Genomics and Keck Genomics Platform where he was promoted to an Assistant Professor of Translational Genomics and Director of Keck Genomics Platform.

In his role as an Assistant Professor, Dr. Manojlovic has a continued interest in urothelial carcinomas, with a focus on utilizing next generation sequencing and “omics” to elucidate population and tumor heterogeneity, as well as tumor microenvironments at the nexus of informatics and functional biologics with direct clinical implications. Dr. Manojlovic plans to expand profiling and comprehensive molecular analysis of the organ-confined elusive low-grade heterogeneous urothelial carcinomas that escape standard treatments and escalate into aggressive high-risk tumors with a high rate of mortality. Furthermore, building on his previous experiences with continuous collaborations, Dr. Manojlovic is interested in interrogating the ancestral effects on disease progression and outcomes in the urothelial tumors. His group provides opportunities in dual training in functional bioinformatics with emphasis on clinical biologics approaches. Dr. Manojlovic has a major focus on applications of high throughput genomics critical to elucidate the oncogenic transcriptomes and genomes to identify clinically targetable events under the umbrella of precision medicine.

• Common mitochondrial deletions in RNA-Seq: evaluation of bulk, single-cell, and spatial transcriptomic datasets Commun Biol. 2024 Feb 17; 7(1):200. . View in PubMed
• Construction of high coverage whole-genome sequencing libraries from single colon crypts without DNA extraction or whole-genome amplification BMC Res Notes. 2023 Apr 27; 16(1):66. . View in PubMed
• Impact of Genomic and Clinical Factors on Outcome of Children =18 Months of Age with Stage 3 Neuroblastoma with Unfavorable Histology and without MYCN Amplification: A Children’s Oncology Group (COG) Report Clin Cancer Res. 2023 04 14; 29(8):1546-1556. . View in PubMed
• Genome Analysis Using Whole-Exome Sequencing of Non-Syndromic Cleft Lip and/or Palate from Malagasy Trios Identifies Variants Associated with Cilium-Related Pathways and Asian Genetic Ancestry Genes (Basel). 2023 03 07; 14(3). . View in PubMed
• Evolutionary conservation of the fidelity of transcription Nat Commun. 2023 03 20; 14(1):1547. . View in PubMed
• Analysis of the genomic landscapes of Barbadian and Nigerian women with triple negative breast cancer Cancer Causes Control. 2022 Jun; 33(6):831-841. . View in PubMed
• High prevalence of deleterious mutations in concomitant nonsyndromic cleft and outflow tract heart defects Am J Med Genet A. 2022 07; 188(7):2082-2095. . View in PubMed
• Imaging of type I procollagen biosynthesis in cells reveals biogenesis in highly organized bodies; Collagenosomes Matrix Biol Plus. 2021 Dec; 12:100076. . View in PubMed
• Correction: Comprehensive molecular profiling of UV-induced metastatic melanoma in Nme1/Nme2-deficient mice reveals novel markers of survival in human patients Oncogene. 2021 Nov; 40(45):6394. . View in PubMed
• Role of Ki-67, MRE11, and PD-L1 as Predictive Biomarkers for Recurrence Pattern in Muscle-invasive Bladder Cancer Anticancer Res. 2021 Aug; 41(8):3851-3857. . View in PubMed
• Comprehensive molecular profiling of UV-induced metastatic melanoma in Nme1/Nme2-deficient mice reveals novel markers of survival in human patients Oncogene. 2021 11; 40(45):6329-6342. . View in PubMed
• Wild-Type KRAS Allele Effects on Druggable Targets in KRAS Mutant Lung Adenocarcinomas Genes (Basel). 2021 09 11; 12(9). . View in PubMed
• What Genes Can Tell: A Closer Look at Vestibular Schwannoma Otol Neurotol. 2020 04; 41(4):522-529. . View in PubMed
• Cancer transcriptomic profiling from rapidly enriched circulating tumor cells Int J Cancer. 2020 05 15; 146(10):2845-2854. . View in PubMed
• Histological Validation of 11Carbon-Acetate Positron Emission Tomography/Computerized Tomography in Detecting Lymph Node Metastases in Prostate Cancer J Urol. 2019 02; 201(2):332-341. . View in PubMed
• Discovery and evaluation of inhibitor of LARP6 as specific antifibrotic compound Sci Rep. 2019 01 23; 9(1):326. . View in PubMed
• Lack of APC somatic mutation is associated with early-onset colorectal cancer in African Americans Carcinogenesis. 2018 12 13; 39(11):1331-1341. . View in PubMed
• Comprehensive molecular profiling of 718 Multiple Myelomas reveals significant differences in mutation frequencies between African and European descent cases PLoS Genet. 2017 Nov; 13(11):e1007087. . View in PubMed
• Integrated genomic analyses reveal frequent TERT aberrations in acral melanoma Genome Res. 2017 04; 27(4):524-532. . View in PubMed
• A method to reduce ancestry related germline false positives in tumor only somatic variant calling BMC Med Genomics. 2017 10 19; 10(1):61. . View in PubMed
• La-related protein 6 controls ciliated cell differentiation Cilia. 2017; 6:4. . View in PubMed
• Molecular Genetic Profiling of Adolescent Glassy Cell Carcinoma of the Cervix Reveals Targetable EGFR Amplification with Potential Therapeutic Implications J Adolesc Young Adult Oncol. 2016 09; 5(3):297-302. . View in PubMed
• RFX7 is required for the formation of cilia in the neural tube Mech Dev. 2014 May; 132:28-37. . View in PubMed
• Serine-threonine kinase receptor-associated protein (STRAP) regulates translation of type I collagen mRNAs Mol Cell Biol. 2013 Oct; 33(19):3893-906. . View in PubMed
• Tacrolimus (FK506) prevents early stages of ethanol induced hepatic fibrosis by targeting LARP6 dependent mechanism of collagen synthesis PLoS One. 2013; 8(6):e65897. . View in PubMed
• A novel role of RNA helicase A in regulation of translation of type I collagen mRNAs RNA. 2012 Feb; 18(2):321-34. . View in PubMed
• Extracellular signal-regulated kinase-2 within the ventral tegmental area regulates responses to stress J Neurosci. 2010 Jun 02; 30(22):7652-63. . View in PubMed
• Nicotine exposure during adolescence induces a depression-like state in adulthood Neuropsychopharmacology. 2009 May; 34(6):1609-24. . View in PubMed

• Lenz, Heinz-Josef
• Magee, William
• Tsukamoto, Hidekazu
• Daneshmand, Siamak
• Lieber, Michael
• Hammoudeh, Jeff
• Yen, Stephen
• Urata, Mark
• Chai, Yang