Computational Precision Oncology Laboratory
Chengyue Wu, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
Areas of Research
- Computational Biology
- Artificial Intelligence
- Early Cancer Detection
- Prevention and Risk Assessment
- Breast Cancer
- Imaging
- Chemotherapy
- Immunotherapy
- Tumor Microenvironment
Welcome to our lab! We develop image-guided computational and mathematical models to improve cancer diagnosis, prognosis and treatment optimization.
Research Interests
The value of computational modeling in precision cancer healthcare is difficult to overstate. Emerging developments in cancer assessment techniques and therapeutics provide tons of opportunities to detect cancers earlier, monitor response more accurately and manage cancers with better outcomes. Along with the increasing opportunities, however, decision-making to find interpretable diagnostic and prognostic markers or to plan the optimal treatment for individual patients becomes increasingly flexible and complex. Without computational approaches powered by both mechanism-informed modeling and statistical analysis, it would be extremely challenging to interpret essential information from high-dimensional data such as imaging, nor to systematically evaluate various therapeutic options.
Thereby, my research interests focus on integrating advanced medical imaging techniques, image analysis approaches and computational modeling to hasten the arrival of personalized cancer healthcare. In particular, my current research themes are:
- Developing image-guided mathematical models to represent the mechanisms of tumor growth, tumor-associated vasculature and microenvironment, systemic drug delivery and therapy-induced responses.
- Investigating numerical algorithms to enable efficient model implementation for response prediction and optimization with a quantified uncertainty.
- Developing longitudinal image processing, multi-modal data integration and statistical approaches to improve breast cancer early detection.
About Dr. Wu
Dr. Chengyue Wu is an assistant professor in Imaging Physics at MD Anderson Cancer Center, with joint appointments in Biostatistics and Breast Imaging, and affiliation with the Institute for Data Science in Oncology. Dr. Wu’s research interests focus on computational oncology, especially integrating emerging biomedical imaging techniques with computational modeling, to improve the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of human cancers. She has authored or co-authored over 25 journal articles and over 60 conference abstracts or papers, and has been regularly serving as a co-organizer, executive committee member and moderator/reviewer for multiple scientific conferences. She was awarded the prestigious H. D. Landahl Mathematical Biophysics Award in 2023 from the Society of Mathematical Biology for her contributions to both diagnosing breast cancers and predicting their response to therapy, as well as the ready generalizability of her techniques to other solid tumor types.