Pearland Journal - News
Pearland’s Wu earnsM.D. Anderson honor
Xifeng Wu, M.D., Ph.D., Pearland resident and professor of epidemiology in the Division of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, is the recipient of the Julie and Ben Rogers Award for Excellence in Research for 2008.
The $10,000 award, which rotates annually among areas of patient care, research, education, prevention and administration, recognizes employees who consistently demonstrate excellence in their work and dedication to M. D. Anderson’s mission to eliminate cancer.
Wu’s molecular epidemiology research program is known throughout the scientific community as both visionary in concept and revolutionary in approach. It bridges the fields of epidemiology, statistics, laboratory study and clinical research as she seeks to identify cancer risk factors and predictive markers for treatment response.
Her research helps investigators and clinicians better understand the causes of cancer, improve prevention efforts and enhance treatment outcomes. It’s an essential element, she says, in the quest to develop individualized cancer therapies.
“These models may help clinicians identify patients, before the start of therapy, who are most and least likely to benefit from treatments as well as those most likely to develop toxic reactions,” said Wu.
Wu has spent her entire academic career at M. D. Anderson.
“I truly believe in the core values of M. D. Anderson: caring, integrity and discovery,” she said.
Wu received her medical degree from Shanghai Medical University in 1984 and her Ph.D. in epidemiology from The University of Texas School of Public Health in 1994. She joined M. D. Anderson in 1995 as an assistant professor and by 2004 achieved the rank of full professor. She held an Ashbel Smith Professorship from 2006 to 2008. Currently she holds the Betty B. Marcus Chair in Cancer Prevention and also is on the faculty of The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston.
Wu is internationally recognized for her work in developing intermediate phenotypes as cancer susceptibility markers. Her work on telomere dysfunction as a genetic susceptibility factor is pioneering, and she is constantly developing novel functional assays in DNA damage/repair and applying them to cancer etiology and progression. Wu also is on the cutting edge of research involving germline genetic variations. She is particularly interested in pharmacogenetics, a new field that identifies genetic variations involved in determining why some patients respond better than others to therapeutic drugs.
As a cancer epidemiologist with more than 200 publications to her credit, Wu has collaborated with investigators at M. D. Anderson and around the nation. She is the principal investigator on nine large National Institutes of Health-funded epidemiological studies totaling more than $22 million. Wu also is a collaborative investigator on many other NIH-funded grants, including a recent multi-institutional study of bladder cancer, which she directed.
The $10,000 award, which rotates annually among areas of patient care, research, education, prevention and administration, recognizes employees who consistently demonstrate excellence in their work and dedication to M. D. Anderson’s mission to eliminate cancer.
Wu’s molecular epidemiology research program is known throughout the scientific community as both visionary in concept and revolutionary in approach. It bridges the fields of epidemiology, statistics, laboratory study and clinical research as she seeks to identify cancer risk factors and predictive markers for treatment response.
Her research helps investigators and clinicians better understand the causes of cancer, improve prevention efforts and enhance treatment outcomes. It’s an essential element, she says, in the quest to develop individualized cancer therapies.
“These models may help clinicians identify patients, before the start of therapy, who are most and least likely to benefit from treatments as well as those most likely to develop toxic reactions,” said Wu.
Wu has spent her entire academic career at M. D. Anderson.
“I truly believe in the core values of M. D. Anderson: caring, integrity and discovery,” she said.
Wu received her medical degree from Shanghai Medical University in 1984 and her Ph.D. in epidemiology from The University of Texas School of Public Health in 1994. She joined M. D. Anderson in 1995 as an assistant professor and by 2004 achieved the rank of full professor. She held an Ashbel Smith Professorship from 2006 to 2008. Currently she holds the Betty B. Marcus Chair in Cancer Prevention and also is on the faculty of The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston.
Wu is internationally recognized for her work in developing intermediate phenotypes as cancer susceptibility markers. Her work on telomere dysfunction as a genetic susceptibility factor is pioneering, and she is constantly developing novel functional assays in DNA damage/repair and applying them to cancer etiology and progression. Wu also is on the cutting edge of research involving germline genetic variations. She is particularly interested in pharmacogenetics, a new field that identifies genetic variations involved in determining why some patients respond better than others to therapeutic drugs.
As a cancer epidemiologist with more than 200 publications to her credit, Wu has collaborated with investigators at M. D. Anderson and around the nation. She is the principal investigator on nine large National Institutes of Health-funded epidemiological studies totaling more than $22 million. Wu also is a collaborative investigator on many other NIH-funded grants, including a recent multi-institutional study of bladder cancer, which she directed.
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