Statistical Bioinformatics Lab

Wenyi Wang received her PhD in Biostatistics (Johns Hopkins University, 2007) and a joint postdoctoral training at Stanford Genome Technology Center and UC Berkeley Statistics (2007-2010). In 2010, she joined the Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Wenyi's research includes contributions to statistical bioinformatics in cancer, including MuSE for subclonal mutation calling, DeMixT for transcriptome deconvolution, Famdenovo for de novo mutation identification, and more recently, a pan-cancer characterization of genetic intra-tumor heterogeneity in subclonal selection. Her group is focused on the development and application of computational methods to study the evolution of the human genome as well as the cancer genome, and to further develop risk prediction models to accelerate the translation of biological findings to clinical practice.

Currently her laboratory is focused on two research topics: 1) Development of deconvolution models in order to build an atlas of gene expression states of tumor and immune cells during cancer evolution; and 2) Statistical models for cancer risk counseling for individuals with deleterious germline mutations.

Pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellow positions are available (see the biostatistics position and the cancer genomics position). Please inquire with Dr. Wang.

Lab Christmas party 2021

PI: Wenyi Wang

Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

Wenyi Wang (王文漪), Professor, Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Division of Basic Science Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson, Cancer Center, Houston, Texas

Curriculum Vitae



Latest News

NCI
8Mar
2023

TmS Shiny app online!

In order to facilitate biological correlative analysis using tumor-specific tumor-cell total mRNA expression (TmS) across cancer types, we present a Shiny app for visual inspections of sequencing data from ~6,500 cancer patients without prior programming knowledge. We are looking for user feedbacks:
https://wwylab.github.io/TmS/articles/shinyapp.html.

NCI
6Mar
2023

Our new risk prediction modeling paper is on bioRxiv!

There will be more than 20 million cancer survivors in the US by 2026. To help characterize the risk trajectories of this under-studied cancer population, we propose a Bayesian semiparametric model that integrates competing cancer outcomes with a non-homogenous poisson process for recurring events. Check out our preprint for more exciting results we achieved with this model: 10.1101/2023.02.28.530537v2.

NCI
31Jan
2023

Congratulations to collaborator Di Zhao and our dream team for winning the PCF Challenge Award!

NCI
12Jan
2023

Congrats: 4th year PhD student Hoai Nam Nguyen for winning the ASA Section in Lifetime Data Science (LiDS) student paper award!

NCI
1Dec
2022

TmS paper is now in print in Nature Biotechnology November issue.


https://www.nature.com/nbt/volumes/40/issues/11#Features

NCI
15Jun
2022

Exciting TmS News in the media

Check out two recently published complementary reports regarding our work on tumor cell total mRNA expression from the Scientist Magazine and GenomeWeb Precision Oncology! Click on this title to open both articles together!



Note: If you are only seeing one article, check your pop-up blocker

NCI
13Jun
2022

TmS Blog is online

The TmS blog provides a "behind the paper" insight into the motivation and the work done. Click the link below to check out the blog.
https://bioengineeringcommunity.nature.com/posts/tumor-specific-total-mrna-expression-a-robust-and-prognostic-feature-across-cancers

NCI
13Jun
2022

Our TmS Metric is Published at Nature Biotechnology

Very excited to share our paper in Nature Biotechnology today! Huge amount of work by Shaolong Cao, Jennifer Wang, Shuangxi Ji et al! It is amazing to work with many experts across cancers. Every cancer tells its own story and our metric TmS can quantify it! Special thanks to Peter Van Loo's lab for a wonderful collaboration! Here is the link for the paper. The TmS data can be found at https://github.com/wwylab/TmS.
Doi: 10.1038/s41587-022-01342-x

NCI
28Mar
2022

Wenyi will give a keynote talk at RECOMB May 22-25th 2022

The program of RECOMB 2022 is out, click here for more info. This is one of the two major annual conferences in field of computational biology. Wenyi will talk about "Deciphering cancer cell evolution and ecology" at 8am on Wed May 25th!

NCI
20Mar
2022

R01 grant achieved a 3% score!

Our methods R01 grant achieved a 3 percentile priority score from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). This grant titled "statistical methods for analysis of heterogeneous tumors" will support the development of integrative deconvolution models that unite the transcriptomic and genomic aspects of tumor heterogeneity and evolution.

CDMRP
27Feb
2022

Lab receives DoD Prostate Cancer Research Program Research Program Data Sciencec Award!

Wenyi's lab is awarded a CDMRP Department of Defense Prostate Cancer Research Program Data Science Award to develop an integrated genomic definition and therapeutic strategy for androgen-indifferent prostate cancer, in partnership with Dr. Ana Aparicio from the Department of Genitourinary Medical Oncology at MDACC.

Nam_SSGG_award
27Jan
2022

Congratulations to Nam for winning the ASA Statistical Genetics and Genomics Paper Award competition!

The title of the paper is Bayesian estimation of a joint semiparametric recurrent event model of multiple cancer types with application to the Li-Fraumeni Syndrome.

zeyapaperpic
27Oct
2021

Former PhD student Zeya Wang's paper on Bayesian Edge Regression in Undirected Graphical Models is accepted by JASA

He is now a Machine Learning Engineer at Tik Tok, California. Congrats Zeya!

28Sep
2021

Wenyi will join the editorial board of JASA Applications and Case Studies as Associate Editor on Jan 1st 2022

A huge congratulations to Wenyi!

9Sep
2021

We are proud to announce MuSE2.0

for somatic mutation calling, with 50x speedup from MuSE1.0

7Apr
2021

Wang lab is on the MD Anderson News!

For our work on genetic diversity within tumors to understand cancer evolution

21Jan
2021

Congrats: 3rd year PhD student Yujie Jiang received the best paper award from ASA Section in Statistical Genetics and Genomics!

For his work on CliP: fast subclonal architecture reconstruction forcancer cells from genomic DNA sequencing data.

4Oct
2020

We are excited to introduce a mathematical model to measure an essential RNA feature in tumor cell!

See how we use it to track tumor phenotypes at the link to the preprint below!

24Aug
2020

Wenyi received a CPRIT grant for cancer prevention as co-PI. Congrats!!

Improving Risk Prediction for Li-Fraumeni Syndrome: A Practical Tool for Clinical Health Care Providers (Banu Arun/Wenyi Wang) - $896,896

18Aug
2020

Famdenovo is on Genome Research August Issue

Congratulations to Fan, Elissa, Carlos and Matt!!

7Jul
2020

A big congrats to Wenyi for promotion to the position of a full professor effective 9/1!

31Jan
2020

DeMixT 1.2.3 released!

Available on Bioconductor and GitHub

11Oct
2019

Our two companion papers on LFS are accepted at Cancer Research!

TP53 mutation associated cancer-specific, or multiple-primary-cancer onset penetrances.

New member
18Sep
2019

Welcome! New postdoctoral fellow Dr. Shuangxi Ji.

Dr. Shuangxi Ji received a PhD in Biological Sciences from University of Birmingham.

czi
21Aug
2019

Awarded! CZI Seed Network Fund for Human Cell Atlas

We are member of the Retina team.

bioconductor
23May
2019

DeMixT is on Bioconductor.

Recommended download from Bioconductor

GCC
10Jan
2019

MD/PhD student Carlos Vera Recio received NLM fellowship Congrats!

National Library of Medicine (NLM) Training Program in Biomedical Informatics and Data Science

19-3060_Dodd_V3
9Oct
2018

DeMixT paper accepted!

Transcriptome Deconvolution of Heterogeneous Tumor Samples with Immune Infiltration will be published by iScience!

biostatspaper
9Sep
2018

Our multiple primary model accepted by Biostatistics!

Our Bayesian estimation of a semiparametric recurrent event model for estimation of multiple primary cancers paper has been accepted by Biostatistics!

csrgithubpic
5May
2018

A new subclonal clustering method

Accompanying PCAWG11, our lab has developed a new consensus clustering for subclonal reconstruction software, CSR (pronounced "Caesar").

hetpaperpic
5May
2018

PCAWG Results

A huge endeavor of the Pan-Cancer Analysis Working Group (PCAWG): Portraits of genetic intra-tumour heterogeneity (ITH) and subclonal selection across cancer types.

jasapaperpic
29Apr
2018

LFS statistical model accepted

Our first statistical modeling work for the Li-Fraumeni Syndrome (LFS) is acceptd by Journal of the American Statistical Association after a 3-year journey! Congrats everyone!

trainingprogrampic
29Apr
2018

Postdocs opportunities

My TAMU collaborator Val Johnson and I are jointly recruiting postdocs in cancer bioinformatics through this 2-year training program at TAMU. Citizenship or green card required. Send us your CV if interested.

Group Members

LIFE IN HOUSTON

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Lab holiday party 2022

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CGSI 2022

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CGSI 2022

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RECOMB 2022

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RECOMB 2022

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RECOMB 2022

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Lab Retreat May6th2022

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Lab Retreat May6th2022

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Lab Christmas Party 2021

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LabRetreatGroupPic
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