Lan Guo, PhD

Dr. Guo is an Associate Professor of Community Medicine and Cancer Center as well as the Program Assistant Director of West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute (WVCTSI) for Biomedical Informatics. She received her Bachelor of Science ...

Professor

Organization:

West Virginia University School of Public Health

Department:

Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences

Classification:

Faculty

Member

Organization:

West Virginia University WVU Cancer Institute

Department:

WVU Cancer Institute Research Programs

Classification:

Faculty

• PhD, West Virginia University, 2004

Publications/Editing: With a strong background in bioinformatics, Dr. Guo has a total of 42 peer-reviewed journal publications, 11 papers in IEEE or ACM conference proceedings, two invited book chapters, and 18 abstracts published in conferences, including the American Association for Cancer Research and Society of Toxicology. Her work on breast cancer prognostic gene signatures was featured on the cover of Clinical Cancer Research (April 2007). Her work on lung cancer prognostic biomarkers received 2007 NIOSH Nomination for the CDC Excellence in Science Awards (CHARLES C. SHEPARD SCIENCE AWARDS). Her work on developing a lung cancer prognostic model using an epidemiology approach won the 2^nd Place Poster Award in the 4^th CCTS Scientific Meeting and 5^th Annual Appalachian Health Summit in 2013.

Dr. Guo serves on Editorial Board of PLOS ONE, Cancer Informatics, Oncology Letters, and Journal of Thoracic Disease. She serves on the Executive Committee of International Society for Translational Medicine since 2011.

Recent news items related to work: 
“This Everyday Office Item Could Be Taking Years Off Your Life": https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/printer-toner-dangers

Printer Toner Linked To Genetic Changes, Health Risks In New Study: http://www.wvucancer.org/news/story?headline=printer-toner-linked-to-genetic-changes-health-risks-in-new-study

Dr. Guo is a Professor of the Dept. of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences in School of Public Health and the West Virginia University Cancer Institute (WVUCI). She has led the Biomedical Informatics Resources Core (BMIR) of West Virginia Clinical & Translational Science Institute (WVCTSI) since its founding in 2009, and is experienced in fostering multi-institutional collaboration and multidisciplinary research as PD on a U54 NIGMS CTR grant, and PI on three projects including a NLM R01/R56 on bioinformatics, a NIGMS stimulus grant on translational research, and a NIEHS R01 on systems biology and nanotoxicology. During these grants, Dr. Guo has established collaboration with clinicians, biological researchers, and biostatisticians from Harvard University, Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Michigan, NorthShore University HealthSystem, and National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. This multidisciplinary research team seamlessly integrates clinical expertise, biostatistics and epidemiology design, and biological experiment validation on patient samples throughout hypothesis-driven research. Dr. Guo’s research focuses on developing bioinformatics tools to personalize diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of human disease. Furthermore, she employs genomic and proteomic assays of clinical specimens to evaluate the identified biomarkers for their prognostic and predictive values in clinics and reveal therapeutic targets for intervention. Dr. Guo has five US and international patents on cancer biomarkers discovered from her research. She has served in numerous review panels for the NIH and the DOD.

Sara Crile Allen and James Frederick Allen Lung Cancer

The traditional prognostic factors for cancer are imperfect.  In part, they lack the information about the biological diversity of cancer and have not reflected the complexity of molecular mechanism of the diseases. In addition, they focus on predicting for populations instead of for individuals.  Recent advances in the knowledge of human genomics and proteomics, as well as bioinformatics, have revolutionized the ways in which researchers are able to identify molecular signatures of cancer recurrence and metastases.

Genome-wide studies will guide hypothesis-driven experimentation and aid clinical decision-making. Bioinformatics is the key to identifying new disease biomarkers and making accurate predictions in molecular diagnosis and prognosis.  My research interests include applying bioinformatics methods to clinical research, specifically, to the identification of novel biomarkers for the diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutics prediction of human diseases. 

Furthermore, we will employ genomic and proteomic analysis of clinical specimens to validate the biomarkers identified in genome-wide association studies. We are also interested in constructing genome-wide co-expression networks and gene regulation networks. Identifying gene products within one or a few specific pathways could potentially enhance the prognostic value and reveal therapeutic targets for intervention.

Dr. Guo was awarded an R01 grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH)/National Library of Medicine in 2008, with a priority score of 129, ranking in the top 4.7 percentile. In August 2009, she was awarded an NIH ARRA stimulus grant to advance translational research. Her biomarker research has resulted in five pending patents and has been featured by numerous national and international news organizations, including International Innovation, Science Works for US, Newswise, and Fox Business News.