Stephen T. Wong

Stephen T. Wong, PhD

Professor of Computer Science and Bioengineering in Radiology, Academic Institute
John S. Dunn Presidential Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Engineering, Full Member, Research Institute
Associate Director, Cores, Biostatistics and Bioinformatics
Associate Director, Shared Resources, Dr. Mary and Ron Neal Cancer Center
Houston Methodist
Weill Cornell Medical College


stwong@houstonmethodist.org
Biography

Dr. Wong holds the John S. Dunn, Sr. Distinguished Endowed Chair in Biomedical Engineering; he is also a Professor of Radiology, Pathology, Laboratory Medicine, Neurology, and Neurosciences, the Associate Director of Translational Research at Methodist Cancer Center, and Chief of Medical Physics and Chief Research Information Officer at Houston Methodist Hospital. In addition, he serves as the Founding Director of the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Center for BRAIN (Bioinformatics Research and Imaging in the Neurosciences) and Founding Director of the Center for Modeling Cancer Development at Houston Methodist Research Institute. He also holds a dozen of other academic posts across institutions in Texas Medical Center as well as overseas universities and medical schools.

An internationally acclaimed bioengineer and imaging scientist, Dr. Stephen Wong has led teams that developed production automation for first very large scale integration (VLSI) 1MB computer memory chip and the largest online brokerage trading system, and contributed to the first hospital-wide digital radiology image management system in US academic medical centers.

Dr. Wong has more than twenty years of research and management experience in industry and academia, including Hewlett-Packard, AT&T Bell Laboratories, the Japanese Fifth Generation Computer Systems Project, Philips Medical Systems and Royal Philips Electronics, Charles Schwab, University of California - San Francisco/Berkeley, Harvard University and Houston Methodist Hospital. He received his senior executive education from the MIT Sloan School of Management, Stanford University Graduate School of Business and Columbia University Graduate School of Business. He holds many patents and has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers and four books. He also serves on and chairs NIH study panels, conference program committees, and the editorial boards of twelve scientific journals. As an international authority, he is sought as a speaker on medical imaging, systems biology, healthcare IT, drug development, biophotonics, clinical neuroscience and other related topics.

Description of Research

Dr. Wong's research focuses on understanding health and disease from a systems perspective in order to generate cost-effective strategies and solutions for disease management. His research approaches combine both experimental and high throughput biology with rigorous computational, bioinformatics, biophysics, and imaging methods to achieve a deep understanding of the functions of each component in biological systems and integration of them with multilevel systems analysis. For example, the consequences of genetic variation, cell-cell interactions and environmental factors are included to reflect the circumstances and microenvironments of the disease condition. Current research projects include pathway modeling and high throughput phenotyping approaches for target discovery and drug repurposing in combating neurological disorders and cancer, and for understanding the mechanisms of these diseases. Additional projects include reformulation of small molecule drugs using chemical biology approaches, the development of point-of-care molecular diagnosis and monitoring devices using biophotonics and nanotechnology techniques, and the development of label-free molecular image-guided cancer therapy platforms.

Areas Of Expertise

Systems biology Bioinformatics Biological and medical imaging Drug repositioning Drug combinations Image-guided therapy Translational biophotonics Molecular imaging Diagnosis Mechanisms of cancer Mechanisms of neurological disorders
Education & Training

Postdoctoral Fellowship, Japan Science and Technology Agency
MS, Lehigh University
PhD, Lehigh University
Postdoctoral Fellowship, National Science Foundation, ICOT, The Fifth Generation Computer Systems Project, MITI, Tokyo
Publications

Addressing the genetic/nongenetic duality in cancer with systems biology
Kulkarni, P, Wiley, HS, Levine, H, Sauro, H, Anderson, A, Wong, STC, Meyer, AS, Iyengar, P, Corlette, K, Swanson, K, Mohanty, A, Bhattacharya, S, Patel, A, Jain, V & Salgia, R 2023, , Trends in Cancer, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 185-187. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trecan.2022.12.004

Ryanodine receptor 1-mediated Ca2+ signaling and mitochondrial reprogramming modulate uterine serous cancer malignant phenotypes
Zhang, L, Au-Yeung, CL, Huang, C, Yeung, TL, Ferri-Borgogno, S, Lawson, BC, Kwan, SY, Yin, Z, Wong, ST, Thomas, V, Lu, KH, Yip, KP, Sham, JSK & Mok, SC 2022, , Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research, vol. 41, no. 1, 242. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13046-022-02419-w

Systemic Nos2 Depletion and Cox inhibition limits TNBC disease progression and alters lymphoid cell spatial orientation and density
Somasundaram, V, Ridnour, LA, Cheng, RY, Walke, AJ, Kedei, N, Bhattacharyya, DD, Wink, AL, Edmondson, EF, Butcher, D, Warner, AC, Dorsey, TH, Scheiblin, DA, Heinz, W, Bryant, RJ, Kinders, RJ, Lipkowitz, S, Wong, ST, Pore, M, Hewitt, SM, McVicar, DW, Anderson, SK, Chang, J, Glynn, SA, Ambs, S, Lockett, SJ & Wink, DA 2022, , Redox Biology, vol. 58, pp. 102529. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.redox.2022.102529

An AI-driven clinical care pathway to reduce 30-day readmission for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients
Wang, L, Li, G, Ezeana, CF, Ogunti, R, Puppala, M, He, T, Yu, X, Wong, SSY, Yin, Z, Roberts, AW, Nezamabadi, A, Xu, P, Frost, A, Jackson, RE & Wong, STC 2022, , Scientific Reports, vol. 12, no. 1, 20633. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-22434-3

An AI-driven clinical care pathway to reduce 30-day readmission for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients
Wang, L, Li, G, Ezeana, CF, Ogunti, R, Puppala, M, He, T, Yu, X, Wong, SSY, Yin, Z, Roberts, AW, Nezamabadi, A, Xu, P, Frost, A, Jackson, RE & Wong, STC 2022, , Scientific Reports, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 20633. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-22434-3

Bone metastasis initiation is coupled with bone remodeling through osteogenic differentiation of NG2+ cells
Zhang, W, Xu, Z, Hao, X, He, T, Li, J, Shen, Y, Liu, K, Gao, Y, Liu, J, Edwards, D, Muscarella, AM, Wu, L, Yu, L, Xu, L, Chen, X, Wu, Y-H, Bado, IL, Ding, Y, Aguirre, S, Wang, H, Gugala, Z, Satcher, RL, Wong, ST & Zhang, XH-F 2022, , Cancer Discovery. https://doi.org/10.1158/2159-8290.CD-22-0220

A personalized image-guided intervention system for peripheral lung cancer on patient-specific respiratory motion model
Wang, T, He, T, Zhang, Z, Chen, Q, Zhang, L, Xia, G, Yang, L, Wang, H, Wong, STC & Li, H 2022, , International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery, vol. 17, no. 10, pp. 1751-1764. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-022-02676-2

Ex vivo expanded human regulatory T cells modify neuroinflammation in a preclinical model of Alzheimer’s disease
Faridar, A, Vasquez, M, Thome, AD, Yin, Z, Xuan, H, Wang, JH, Wen, S, Li, X, Thonhoff, JR, Zhao, W, Zhao, H, Beers, DR, Wong, STC, Masdeu, JC & Appel, SH 2022, , Acta Neuropathologica Communications, vol. 10, no. 1, 144. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40478-022-01447-z

Asymmetry Disentanglement Network for Interpretable Acute Ischemic Stroke Infarct Segmentation in Non-contrast CT Scans
Ni, H, Xue, Y, Wong, K, Volpi, J, Wong, STC, Wang, JZ & Huang, X 2022, . in L Wang, Q Dou, PT Fletcher, S Speidel & S Li (eds), Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention – MICCAI 2022 - 25th International Conference, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), vol. 13438 LNCS, Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH, pp. 416-426, 25th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2022, Singapore, Singapore, 9/18/22. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16452-1_40

Automatic Segmentation in Acute Ischemic Stroke: Prognostic Significance of Topological Stroke Volumes on Stroke Outcome
Wong, KK, Cummock, JS, Li, G, Ghosh, R, Xu, P, Volpi, JJ & Wong, STC 2022, , Stroke, vol. 53, no. 9, pp. 2896-2905. https://doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.121.037982

DeepStroke: An efficient stroke screening framework for emergency rooms with multimodal adversarial deep learning
Cai, T, Ni, H, Yu, M, Huang, X, Wong, K, Volpi, J, Wang, JZ & Wong, STC 2022, , Medical Image Analysis, vol. 80, 102522. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.media.2022.102522

A comparative efficacy study of diagnostic digital breast tomosynthesis and digital mammography in BI-RADS 4 breast cancer diagnosis
Ezeana, CF, Puppala, M, Wang, L, Chang, JC & Wong, STC 2022, , European Journal of Radiology, vol. 153, 110361. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrad.2022.110361

Methyladenosine Modification in RNAs: From Regulatory Roles to Therapeutic Implications in Cancer
Qu, X, Zhang, Y, Sang, X, Ren, D, Zhao, H & Wong, STC 2022, , Cancers, vol. 14, no. 13, 3195. https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers14133195

Targeting epithelial-mesenchymal plasticity via ribosome biogenesis inhibition reduces chemoresistant metastasis of breast cancer: Abstract 963, Cancer Res (2022) 82 (12_Supplement):963.
Ban, Y, Dong, W, Zou, Y, Lee, SB, Sheng, J, Cao, Y, Wong, ST & Gao, D 2022, . https://doi.org/10.1158/1538-7445.AM2022-963

Image-to-image translation of label-free molecular vibrational images for a histopathological review using the UNet+/seg-cGAN model
He, Y, Li, J, Shen, S, Liu, K, WONG, KELVINK, He, T & WONG, STEPHENTC 2022, , Biomedical Optics Express, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 1924-1938. https://doi.org/10.1364/BOE.445319

HDirect-MAP: Projection-free single-cell modeling of response to checkpoint immunotherapy
Lu, Y, Xue, G, Zheng, N, Han, K, Yang, W, Wang, RS, Wu, L, Miller, LD, Pardee, T, Triozzi, PL, Lo, HW, Watabe, K, Wong, STC, Pasche, BC, Zhang, W & Jin, G 2022, , Briefings in bioinformatics, vol. 23, no. 2, bbab575. https://doi.org/10.1093/bib/bbab575

HDirect-MAP: Projection-free single-cell modeling of response to checkpoint immunotherapy
Lu, Y, Xue, G, Zheng, N, Han, K, Yang, W, Wang, RS, Wu, L, Miller, LD, Pardee, T, Triozzi, PL, Lo, HW, Watabe, K, Wong, STC, Pasche, BC, Zhang, W & Jin, G 2022, , Briefings in bioinformatics, vol. 23, no. 2, bbab575. https://doi.org/10.1093/bib/bbab575

Brain Capital: An Emerging Investment Opportunity
Eyre, H, Faulkenberg, M, Das, S, Hackett, J, Chen, S, Veron, F, Swieboda, P, Ling, GSF, Bennett, EW, Saxena, S, Carnevale, S, Powell, E, Smith, E, Ibañez, A, Wong, ST, Storch, EA, Chan, E, Heinemeyer, M, Ian, R, Dawson, WD, Tomori, D, Soares, JC, Abbott, R, Winter, SF, Chapman, SB, Budinskaya, A, Brown, L, Corner, L, Nylen, K, Smith, G, Mikkelsen, T & Berk, M 2022, Psychiatric Times. <https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/brain-capital-an-emerging-investment-opportunity>

Spatiotemporal gene expression analysis to identify novel tumor-neural crosstalk in TNBC brain metastases: Cancer Res (2022) 82 (4_Supplement): P5-06-01.
Zhao, H, Wang, X, Sheng, J, Xu, S, Gao, D & Wong, ST 2022, . https://doi.org/10.1158/1538-7445.SABCS21-P5-06-01

A clinical study indicates that 3D mammography shows no improvement over 2D mammography in cancer detection rates and biopsy-derived positive predictive value among BI-RADS 4 populations: Cancer Res (2022) 82 (4_Supplement): P3-01-11.
Ezeana, CF, Puppala, M, Wang, L, Wong, ST & Chang, JC 2022, .