Morteza Hajihosseini, PhD

Adjunct Professor, School of Public Health

Pronouns: He/Him/His

Contact Overview Publications

Contact

Adjunct Professor, School of Public Health

Email: mhajihos@ualberta.ca

Overview

Area of Study / Keywords

Spatial Single cell RNA seq Cancer Auto-immune diseases Biostatistics Epidemiology

About

I am interested in epigenomics with a particular focus on single-cell RNA sequencing analysis. Integrating epigenomic data with scRNA-seq holds significant potential for advancing precision medicine by offering a comprehensive understanding of disease mechanisms at both the molecular and cellular levels.

Currently, I am collaborating with an NIH lab at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), working on spatial single-cell RNA-seq analysis in the area of auto-immune diseases. I worked on statistical methods to quantify tumour heterogeneity, find biomarkers, and identify immune cell proliferation. Combining epigenomics and scRNA-seq enables precision medicine to achieve more accurate diagnoses and better-targeted therapies and improve patient outcomes across a wide range of diseases.

During my Ph.D., I investigated the behaviour of different statistical models in the gut microbiome literature involving zero-inflation, over-dispersion, and correlation. I focused on introducing a Bayesian Marginal Zero-Inflated Negative Binomial model to cover the limitations of some of the current models in the literature.

I worked on various interdisciplinary projects with cardiologists, pediatricians, ophthalmologists, pharmacologists, other clinicians and research groups. I have experience working on Alberta administrative hospitalization, emergency department, prescription drugs, and birth registry datasets with the Canadian Vigour Centre (CVC), as well as pharmaceutical industries through the Applied Pharmaceutical Innovation (API) and population-level data collaborating with the WHO European Office for the Prevention and Control of NCDs (NCD Office).

Degrees

PhD, University of Alberta, 2017

MSc, University of Hamadan, Iran, 2013

BSc, University of Birjand, Iran, 2008

Internship and Fellowships:

Postdoctoral Fellowship, Stanford, 2022

Mitacs Accelerate Internship Program, API, Edmonton, 2021

Featured Publications

Maternal co-exposure to mercury and perfluoroalkyl acid isomers and their associations with child neurodevelopment in a Canadian birth cohort.

Anthony J Reardon, Morteza Hajihosseini, Irina Dinu, Catherine J Field, David W Kinniburgh, Amy M MacDonald, Deborah Dewey, Gillian England-Mason, Jonathan W Martin

Environment international. 2023 July; 10.1016/j.envint.2023.108087

Infants less than or equal to 2.5 kg have increased mortality and worse motor neurodevelopmental outcomes at 2years of age after Norwood-Sano palliation.

Averin, Konstantin, Ryerson, Lindsay, Hajihosseini, Morteza, Dinu, Irina A., Freed, Darren H., Bond, Gwen, Joffe, Ari R., Jonker, De Villiers, Hendson, Leonora, Robertson, Charlene M., Atallah, Joseph

JTCVS open. 2023 June; 10.1016/j.xjon.2023.03.007

Geographically weighted linear combination test for gene-set analysis of a continuous spatial phenotype as applied to intratumor heterogeneity.

Payam Amini, Morteza Hajihosseini, Saumyadipta Pyne, Irina Dinu

Frontiers in cell and developmental biology. 2023 March; 10.3389/fcell.2023.1065586

Exploring educational inequalities in hypertension control, salt knowledge and awareness, and patient advice: insights from the WHO STEPS Surveys of adults from nine eastern European and central Asian countries.

Katerina Maximova, Enrique Loyola Elizondo, Holly Rippin, João Breda, Francesco P Cappuccio, Morteza Hajihosseini, Kremlin Wickramasinghe, Irina Novik, Vital Pisaryk, Lela Sturua, Ainura Akmatova, Galina Obreja, Saodat Azimzoda Mustafo, Banu Ekinci, Toker Erguder, Shukhrat Shukurov, Gahraman Hagverdiyev, Diana Andreasyan, Carina Ferreira-Borges, Nino Berdzuli, Stephen Whiting, Natalia Fedkina, Ivo Rakovac

Public health nutrition. 2023 February; 10.1017/S1368980023000356

Evaluating the Prevalence and Factors Associated With an Optimal Neurodevelopmental Outcome in 4-to 6-Year-Old Children With Fontan Circulation

Khoury, Michael, Hajihosseini, Morteza, Robertson, Charlene M. T., Bond, Gwen, Freed, Darren, Dinu, Irina, Makarchuk, Sue, Joffe, Ari, Atallah, Joseph

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF CARDIOLOGY. 2023 February; 10.1016/j.cjca.2022.10.0220828-282X

Infants' gut microbiome data: A Bayesian Marginal Zero-inflated Negative Binomial regression model for multivariate analyses of count data.

Hajihosseini, Morteza, Amini, Payam, Saidi-Mehrabad, Alireza, Dinu, Irina

Computational and structural biotechnology journal. 2023 January; 10.1016/j.csbj.2023.02.027

Evaluating the Prevalence and Factors Associated With an Optimal Neurodevelopmental Outcome in 4- to 6-Year-Old Children With Fontan Circulation.

Khoury, Michael, Hajihosseini, Morteza, Robertson, Charlene M., Bond, Gwen, Freed, Darren, Dinu, Irina, Makarchuk, Sue, Joffe, Ari, Atallah, Joseph

The Canadian journal of cardiology. 2022 October; 10.1016/j.cjca.2022.10.022

Geostatistical Modeling and Heterogeneity Analysis of Tumor Molecular Landscape.

Hajihosseini, Morteza, Amini, Payam, Voicu, Dan, Dinu, Irina, Pyne, Saumyadipta

Cancers. 2022 October; 10.3390/cancers14215235

An updated reference for age-sex-specific birth weight percentiles stratified for ethnicity based on data from all live birth infants between 2005 and 2014 in Alberta, Canada

Canadian Journal of Public Health. 2022 January; 10.17269/s41997-021-00520-9

Music Use for Sedation in Critically ill Children (MUSiCC trial): a pilot randomized controlled trial

Journal of Intensive Care. 2021 January; 10.1186/s40560-020-00523-7

Outcomes of Preterm Infants With Congenital Heart Defects After Early Surgery: Defining Risk Factors at Different Time Points During Hospitalization

Frontiers in Pediatrics. 2021 January; 10.3389/fped.2020.616659

Reduced myocardial blood flow reserve in kidney transplant candidates may hamper risk stratification

Journal of Nephrology. 2021 January; 10.1007/s40620-020-00736-x

Comparison of artificial neural networks and logistic regression for determination of social-cognitive factors impacting drug abstinence

Journal of Substance Use. 2020 January; 10.1080/14659891.2019.1690060

Health-related quality of life after pediatric heart transplantation in early childhood

Pediatric Transplantation. 2020 January; 10.1111/petr.13822

Permafrost Microbial Community Structure Changes Across the Pleistocene-Holocene Boundary

Frontiers in Environmental Science. 2020 January; 10.3389/fenvs.2020.00133

Pre-school neurocognitive and functional outcomes after liver transplant in children with early onset urea cycle disorders, maple syrup urine disease, and propionic acidemia: An inception cohort matched-comparison study

JIMD Reports. 2020 January; 10.1002/jmd2.12095

Clinical features, treatment, prognosis, and mortality in paraquat poisonings: A hospital-based study in Iran

Oghabian, Zohreh, Williams, June, Mohajeri, Mohammad, Nakhaee, Samaneh, Shojaeepour, Saeedeh, Amirabadizadeh, Alireza, Elhamirad, Samira, Hajihosseini, Morteza, Mansouri, Borhan, Mehrpour, Omid

JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN PHARMACY PRACTICE. 2019 July; 10.4103/jrpp.JRPP_18_71