Rong Xu, PhD

Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Director
Center for AI in Drug Discovery
School of Medicine
Member
Cancer Genomics and Epigenomics Program
Case Comprehensive Cancer Center
School of Medicine

Research Information

Research Interests

Rong’s research goal is to facilitate biomedical discovery and to improve health care delivery by promoting efficient biomedical knowledge flow among biomedical researchers, physicians and patients.

My research interests in computer science include:

  1. Artificial Intelligence
  2. Natural language processing
  3. Machine learning, Deep learning
  4. Systems biology
  5. Data mining
  6. Graph theory
  7. Ontology, knowledge representation and engineering
  8. Imaging Informatics

My research interests in biomedical sciences include:

  1. Drug discovery, drug repositioning
  2. Disease gene discover
  3. Gene-environment-disease interactions
  4. Human gut microbiome
  5. Drug target discovery
  6. Drug toxicity prediction
  7. Cancer drug toxicity
  8. Drug addiction
  9. Neuroscience informatics
  10. Health outcomes research

Awards and Honors

Fellow of American College of Medical Informatics (FACMI)
2020
American College of Medical Informatics
Research Scholar
2016
American Cancer Society
New Investigator Award
2015
American Medical Informatics Association
AACR INNOVATOR Award
2015
Landon Foundation
Director’s Innovator Award
2014
National Institutes of Health
Siebel Scholar
2004
Siebel Foundation

Publications

Peer-reviewed publications (* corresponding author)

  1. Wang W, Volkow ND*, Berger NA, Davis PB, Kaelber DC, Xu R*. Association of semaglutide with reduced incidence and relapse of cannabis use disorder in real-world populations: A retrospective cohort study. Mol Psychiatry (accepted).

  2. Wang W, Volkow ND*, Berger NA, Davis PB, Kaelber DC, Xu R*. Association of semaglutide with risk of suicidal ideations in a real-world cohort. Nat Med (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02672-2).

  3. Xu R*, Volkow ND*. Research Briefing: Association of semaglutide and risk of suicidal ideations in a real-world cohort. Nat Med (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02691-z

  4. Wang CX, Kohli R; Olaker VR,  Terebuh P, Xu R, Kaelber. Davis PB. Risk for diagnosis or treatment of mood or anxiety disorders in adults after SARS-CoV-2 infection, 2020-2022. Molecular Psychiatry (accepted)

  5. Ding P, Xu R*. Causal association of COVID-19 with brain structure changes: Findings from a non-overlapping 2-sample Mendelian randomization study. J Neurol Sci. 2023 Nov 15;454:120864. doi: 10.1016/j.jns.2023.120864. Epub 2023 Oct 31. PMID: 37925898.

  6. Wang L, Wang W, Kaelber DC, Xu R*, Berger NA*. GLP-1 Receptor Agonists and Colorectal Cancer Risk in Drug-Naive Patients With Type 2 Diabetes, With and Without Overweight/Obesity. JAMA Oncol. 2023 Dec 7:e235573. doi: 10.1001/jamaoncol.2023.5573. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 38060218; PMCID: PMC10704339.

  7. Gorenflo MP, Davis PB, Kaelber DC, Xu R*. Ischemic stroke after COVID-19 bivalent vaccine administration in patients aged 65 years and older in the United States. NPJ Vaccines. 2023 Nov 23;8(1):180. doi: 10.1038/s41541-023-00777-w. PMID: 37996515; PMCID: PMC10667491.

  8. Ding P, Gurney M, Perry G, Xu R*. Association of COVID-19 with Risk and Progression of Alzheimer's Disease: Non-Overlapping Two-Sample Mendelian Randomization Analysis of 2.6 Million Subjects. J Alzheimers Dis. 2023;96(4):1711-1720. doi: 10.3233/JAD-230632. PMID: 38007657.

  9. Gao ZX, Ding PJ,  Xu R*.Data-driven Computational Drug Repurposing Approaches for Opioid Use Disorder. Pharmacol Res. 2023 Oct 11:106960. doi: 10.1016/j.phrs.2023.106960. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37832859.

  10. Gao ZX, Lingyao Li; Siyuan Ma; Qinyong Wang; Libby Hemphill; Rong Xu. Examining the potential of ChatGPT on biomedical information retrieval: Fact-checking drug-disease associations.  Ann Biomed Eng. 2023 Oct 19. doi: 10.1007/s10439-023-03385-w. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37855948

  11. Wang L,  Davis PB, Berger NA,  Kaelber DC, Volkow ND, Xu R*. Association of COVID-19 with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections in children aged 0 to 5 years in the US in 2022: A multicenter retrospective cohort study. Fam Med Community Health. 2023 Oct;11(4):e002456. doi: 10.1136/fmch-2023-002456. PMID: 37832975; PMCID: PMC10582888.

  12. Wang L,  Davis PB, Berger NA,  Kaelber DC, Volkow ND, Xu R*. Time trend and seasonality in medically attended respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections in US children aged 0 to 5 years, January 2010–January 2023. Fam Med Community Health. 2023 Oct;11(4):e002453. doi: 10.1136/fmch-2023-002453. PMID: 37844966; PMCID: PMC10582996.

  13. Gao ZX, Winhusen TJ*, Gorenflo M, Ghitza UE, Nunes E, Saxon AJ, Korthuis T, Brady K, Luo S, Davis PB, Kaelber DC, Xu R*. Potential effect of antidepressants on remission from cocaine use disorder - A nationwide matched retrospective cohort study. Drug Alcohol Depend. 2023 Sep 7;251:110958. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2023.110958. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37703770.

  14. Wang L,  Volkow ND*, Berger NA, Davis PB, Kaelber DC, Xu R*. Cardiac and mortality outcome differences between methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone prescriptions in patients with opioid use disorders. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 16 August 2023, https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23582

  15. Gao Z, Winhusen TJ*, Gorenflo M, Ghitza UE, Davis PB, Kaelber DC, Xu R*. Repurposing ketamine to treat cocaine use disorder: integration of artificial intelligence-based prediction, expert evaluation, clinical corroboration and mechanism of action analyses. Addiction. 2023 Jul;118(7):1307-1319. doi: 10.1111/add.16168. Epub 2023 Feb 23. PMID: 36792381.

  16. Gao Z, Gorenflo M, Kaelber DC, Monnier VM, Xu R*. Drug repurposing for reducing the risk of cataract extraction in patients with diabetes mellitus: integration of artificial intelligence-based drug prediction and clinical corroboration. Front Pharmacol. 2023 May 18;14:1181711. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2023.1181711. PMID: 37274099; PMCID: PMC10232753.

  17. Ding P, Gorenflo MP, Zhu X, Xu R*. Aspirin Use and Risk of Alzheimer's Disease: A 2-Sample Mendelian Randomization Study. J Alzheimers Dis. 2023;92(3):989-1000. doi: 10.3233/JAD-220787. PMID: 36846997.

  18. Gorenflo MP, Davis PB, Kendall EK, Olaker VR, Kaelber DC, Xu R*. Association of Aspirin Use with Reduced Risk of Developing Alzheimer's Disease in Elderly Ischemic Stroke Patients: A Retrospective Cohort Study. J Alzheimers Dis. 2023;91(2):697-704. doi: 10.3233/JAD-220901. PMID: 36502331.

  19. Olaker VR, Kendall EK, Wang CX, Parran TV, Terebuh P, Kaelber DC, Xu R, Davis PB. Association of Recent SARS-CoV-2 Infection With New-Onset Alcohol Use Disorder, January 2020 Through January 2022. JAMA Netw Open. 2023 Feb 1;6(2):e2255496. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.55496. PMID: 36757694; PMCID: PMC9912133.

  20. Tun X, Wang EJ, Gao Z, Lundberg K, Xu R, Hu D. Integrin β3-Mediated Cell Senescence Associates with Gut Inflammation and Intestinal Degeneration in Models of Alzheimer's Disease. Int J Mol Sci. 2023 Mar 16;24(6):5697. doi: 10.3390/ijms24065697. PMID: 36982771; PMCID: PMC10052535.

  21. Wang L,  Volkow ND*, Berger NA, Davis PB, Kaelber DC, Xu R*. Association of COVID-19 with endocarditis in patients with cocaine or opioid use disorders in the US. Mol Psychiatry (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-022-01903-1

  22. Gorenflo M, Davis PB, Kendall EK, Olaker VR, Kaelber DC, Xu R*. Association of Aspirin Use with Reduced Risk of Developing Alzheimer’s Disease in Elderly Ischemic Stroke Patients: A Retrospective Cohort Study.  J Alzheimers Dis. 2022 Dec 5. doi: 10.3233/JAD-220901. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36502331.

  23. Katabathula S, Davis PB, Xu R*. Sex-specific heterogeneity of mild cognitive impairment identified based on multi-modal data analysis. J Alzheimers Dis. 2022 Nov 15. doi: 10.3233/JAD-220600. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36404544.

  24. Wang L, Xu R*, Kaelber DC, Berger NA*.Time trend and association of early-onset colorectal cancer with diverticular disease in the United States: 2010-2021. Cancers 202214(19), 4948; https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers14194948

  25. Wang L, Wang W, Xu R, Berger NA. SARS-CoV-2 Primary and Breakthrough Infections in Patients with Cancer: Implications for Patient Care. Best Practice & Research Clinical Haematology. 2022, 101384, ISSN 1521-6926,
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beha.2022.101384

  26. Katabathula S, Davis PB, Xu R*. Comorbidity-driven multi-modal subtype analysis in mild cognitive impairment of Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimers Dement. 2022 Sep 27. doi: 10.1002/alz.12792. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36166485.

  27. Kendall EK, Olaker VR, Kaelber DC, Xu R*, Davis PB*. Association of SARS-CoV-2 Infection With New-Onset Type 1 Diabetes Among Pediatric Patients From 2020 to 2021. JAMA Netw Open. 2022 Sep 1;5(9):e2233014. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.33014. PMID: 36149658.

  28. Wang L, Davis PB, Volkow ND, Berger NA, Kaelber DC, Xu R*. Association of COVID-19 with New-Onset Alzheimer's Disease. J Alzheimers Dis. 2022;89(2):411-414. doi: 10.3233/JAD-220717. PMID: 35912749.

  29. Shang Y, Sun X, Chen X, Wang Q, Wang EJ, Miller E, Xu R, Pieper AA, Qi X. A CHCHD6-APP axis connects amyloid and mitochondrial pathology in Alzheimer's disease. Acta Neuropathol. 2022 Sep 14. doi: 10.1007/s00401-022-02499-0. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36104602.

  30. Pan Y, Davis PB, Kaebler DC, Blankfield RP*, Xu R*. Cardiovascular risk of gabapentin and pregabalin in patients with diabetic neuropathy. Cardiovasc Diabetol. 2022 Sep 1;21(1):170. doi: 10.1186/s12933-022-01610-9. PMID: 36050764; PMCID: PMC9438165.

  31. Ding P, Pan Y, Wang Q, Xu R*. Prediction and evaluation of combination pharmacotherapy using natural language processing, machine learning and patient electronic health records. J Biomed Inform. 2022 Aug 17;133:104164. doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2022.104164. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35985621.

  32. Gao ZX, Ding PJ, Xu R* (2022) KG-Predict: A knowledge graph computational framework for drug repurposing. Journal of Biomedical Informatics.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2022.104133

  33. Gao Z, Pan Y, Ding P, Xu R*. A knowledge graph-based disease-gene prediction system using multi-relational graph convolution networks. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2023 Apr 29;2022:468-476. PMID: 37128437; PMCID: PMC10148306.

  34. Wang Q, Xu R*. AANet: Attentive All-level Fusion Deep Neural Network Approach for Multi-modality Early Alzheimer's Disease Diagnosis. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2023 Apr 29;2022:1125-1134. PMID: 37128453; PMCID: PMC10148311.

  35. Wang W, Kaelber DC, Xu R*, Berger NA* (2022). Breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infections, hospitalizations, and mortality in vaccinated patients with cancer in the United States between December 2020 and November 2021. JAMA Oncology. Published online April 08, 2022. doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2022.1096

  36. Wang L, Davis PD, Kaelber DC,  Xu R* (2022) COVID-19 breakthrough infections and hospitalizations among vaccinated patients with dementia in the United States between December 2020 and August 2021. Alzheimer's & Dementia, First published: 13 April 2022. http://doi.org/10.1002/alz.12669

  37. Wang L, Berger NA, Kaelber DC, Davis PB, Volkow ND, Xu R* (2022) Comparison of incidence rates and clinical outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Children Under 5 years old between the Omicron and the Delta Variant periods in the US. JAMA Pediatr. Published online April 01, 2022. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2022.0945

  38. Yuanyuan Zhao, Di Hu, Rihua Wang1, Xiaoyan Sun, Philip Ropelewski, Zita Hubler, Kathleen, Lundberg,  Quanqiu Wang, Drew J. Adams, Rong Xu, and Xin Qi1,* (2022)  ATAD3A oligomerization promotes neuropathology and cognitive deficits in Alzheimer’s disease models. Nat Commun 13, 1121 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28769-9

  39. Wang L, Kaelber DC,   Xu R* , Nathan A Berger* (2022). COVID-19 Breakthrough Infections, Hospitalizations and Mortality in Fully Vaccinated Patients with Hematologic Malignancies: A Clarion Call for Maintaining Mitigation and Ramping-Up Research. Blood Rev. 2022 Jan 31:100931. doi: 10.1016/j.blre.2022.100931. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35120771; PMCID: PMC8802493.

  40. Wang L, Davis PD, Kaelber DC, Volkow N,  Xu R* (2022) Comparison of mRNA-1273 and BNT162b2 vaccines on breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infections and outcomes during the Delta predominant period. JAMA. Published online January 20, 2022. doi:10.1001/jama.2022.0210

  41. Wang L, Berger NA, Kaelber DC, Davis PB, Volkow ND, Xu R* (2022) Comparison of outcomes from COVID infection in pediatric and adult patients before and after the emergence of Omicron. medRxiv [Preprint]. 2022 Jan 2:2021.12.30.21268495. doi: 10.1101/2021.12.30.21268495. PMID: 35018384; PMCID: PMC8750707.

  42. Wang L, Berger NA, Kaelber DC, Davis PB, Volkow ND, Xu R* (2022) COVID infection severity in children under 5 years old before and after Omicron emergence in the US. medRxiv [Preprint]. 2022 Jan 13:2022.01.12.22269179. doi: 10.1101/2022.01.12.22269179. PMID: 35043116; PMCID: PMC8764724.

  43. Wang L, Berger NA*, Xu R* (2021) Risks of SARS-CoV-2 breakthrough infection and hospitalization in fully vaccinated patients with multiple myeloma. JAMA Network Open. 2021;4(11):e2137575. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.37575

  44. Wang Q, Davis PB, Qi X, Chen SG, Gurney ME, Perry G, Doraiswamy MP, Xu R* (2021) Gut-microbiota-microglia-brain interactions in Alzheimer’s disease: knowledge-based, multi-dimensional characterization. Alzheimers Res Ther. 2021 Oct 20;13(1):177. doi: 10.1186/s13195-021-00917-1. PMID: 34670619; PMCID: PMC8529734.

  45. Wang L, Wang Q, Davis PB, Volkow ND, Xu R* (2021)  Increased risk for COVID-19 breakthrough infection in fully vaccinated patients with substance use disorders in the United States between December 2020 and August 2021. World Psychiatry. 2021 Oct 5. doi: 10.1002/wps.20921. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 34612005. (Impact factor: 49.55).

  46. Davis PB, Wang Q, Xu R. Reply to "Post-COVID 19 neurological syndrome: A new risk factor that modifies the prognosis of patients with dementia". Alzheimers Dement. 2022 Jan 3. doi: 10.1002/alz.12460. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 34978377.

  47. Zheng C, Fillmore NR, Ramos-Cejudo J, Brophy M, Osorio R, Gurney ME, Qiu WQ, Au R, Perry G, Dubreuil M, Chen SG, Qi X, Davis PB, Do N, Xu R* (2021). Potential long-term effect of tumor necrosis factor inhibitors on dementia risk: A propensity score matched retrospective cohort study in US veterans. Alzheimers Dement. 2021 Sep 27. doi: 10.1002/alz.12465. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 34569707

  48. Connor Bargar; Chiara Maria Giulia De Luca; Grazia Devigili; Antonio Emanuele Elia; Roberto Cilia; Sara Maria Portaleone; Wen Wang; Irene Tramacere; Edoardo Bistaffa; Federico Angelo Cazzaniga; Giovanni Felisati; Giuseppe Legname; Alessio Di Fonzo; Rong Xu; Steven Alexander Gunzler; Giorgio Giaccone; Roberto Eleopra; Shu Guang Chen; Fabio Moda (2021). Discrimination of MSA-P and MSA-C by RT-QuIC analysis of olfactory mucosa: the first assessment of assay reproducibility between two specialized laboratories. Molecular Neurodegeneration (2021) 16:82 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13024-021-00491-y

  49. Pan YH, Xu R* (2021) Mining Comorbidities of Opioid Use Disorder from FDA Adverse Event Reporting System and Patient Electronic Health Records. ICIBM 2021, BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 22 (2), 1-11

  50. Sreevani Katabathula; Qinyong Wang, Xu R* (2021) Predict Alzheimer’s disease using hippocampus MRI data: a light weight 3D deep convolutional network model with visual and global shape representations. Alzheimer's Research & Therapy 13 (1), 1-9. https://alzres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13195-021-00837-0

  51. Zheng CL, Xu R* (2021) Molecular Subtyping of Alzheimer’s Disease with Consensus Non-Negative Matrix Factorization. PLOS ONE, Published: May 20, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250278

  52. Bargar C, Wang W, Gunzler SA, LeFevre A, Wang Z, Lerner AJ, Singh N, Tatsuoka C, Appleby B, Zhu X, Xu R, Haroutunian V, Zou WQ, Ma J, Chen SG (2021). Streamlined alpha-synuclein RT-QuIC assay for various biospecimens in Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. Acta Neuropathol Commun. 2021 Apr 7;9(1):62. doi: 10.1186/s40478-021-01175-w. PMID: 33827706; PMCID: PMC8028088.

  53. Wang Q, Davis PB, Gurney ME, Xu R* (2021). COVID-19 and dementia: analyses of risk, disparity and outcomes from electronic health records in the US. Alzheimers Dement. 2021 Feb 9. doi: 10.1002/alz.12296. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33559975

  54. Zhou MS† (co-first author), Wang Q† (co-first author), Zheng CL, A. John Rush, Nora D Volkow,  Xu R* (2021). Drug repurposing for opioid use disorders: integration of computational prediction, clinical corroboration, and mechanism of action analyses. Molecular Psychiatry. DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-020-01011-y

  55. Wang Q, Davis PB, Xu R* (2021). COVID-19 risk, disparity and outcomes in patients with chronic liver disease in the United States. Lancet EClinicalMedicine. Published:December 22, 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2020.100688

  56. Xu R*, Berger NA*, Wang Q (2021). Risk, Racial Disparity, and Outcomes Among Patients With Cancer and COVID-19 Infection-Reply. JAMA Oncol. 2021 May 6. doi: 10.1001/jamaoncol.2021.0771. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33956054

  57. Wang Q, Nathan A Berger*, Xu R* (2020). Analyses of Risk, Racial Disparity, and Outcomes of Cancers and Coronavirus Disease 2019 From Electronic Health Records in the US. JAMA Oncology, Published online December 10, 2020. doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2020.6178.

  58. Wang Q, Nathan A Berger*, Xu R* (2020). When Hematologic Malignancies Meet COVID-19 in the United States:  Infections, Death and Disparities. Blood Review. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.blre.2020.100775.

  59. Zhang XW, Wang RH, Hu D, Sun XY, Fujioka H, Lundberg K, Chang E, Wang Q, Xu R, Fianagan ME, Pieper A, Qi X (2020). Oligodendroglial glycolytic stress triggers inflammasome activation and neuropathologyin Alzheimer’s disease. Science Advance. 04 Dec 2020:
    Vol. 6, no. 49, eabb8680. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb8680. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/49/eabb8680

  60. Zhu XF, Li XY, Xu R, Wang T (2020). An iterative approach to detect pleiotropy and perform Mendelian Randomization analysis using GWAS summary statistics. Bioinformatics. 2020 Nov 23:btaa985. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btaa985. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33226062

  61. Wang Q,  Xu R*, Volkow ND* (2020).  Increased risk of COVID-19 infection and mortality in people with mental disorders: analysis from electronic health records in the United States. World Psychiatry (Impact factor: 40.59).First published: 07 October 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.2080

  62. Wang Q, Kaelber D, Xu R*, Volkow ND* (2020). COVID-19 Risk and Outcomes in patients with substance use disorders: Analyses from electronic health records in the United States. Molecular Psychiatry (2020) DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-020-00880-7.

  63. Wang Q, Xu R* (2020). CoMNRank: an integrated approach to extract and prioritize human microbial metabolites from MEDLINE records. J Biomed Inform. 2020;109:103524. doi:10.1016/j.jbi.2020.103524. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32791237/

  64. Wang Q, Xu R* (2020). Automatic extraction, prioritization and analysis of gut microbial metabolites from biomedical literature. Sci Rep. 2020;10(1):9996. Published 2020 Jun 19. doi:10.1038/s41598-020-67075-6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7305201/

  65. Wang Y, Li YS, Zheng CL, Xu R* (2020). DenseCNN: A Densely Connected CNN Model for Alzheimer's Disease Classification Based on Hippocampus MRI Data. Proceedings of 2020 AMIA Annual Symposium 2020.

  66. Zheng C, Xu R* (2020). Predicting cancer origins with a DNA methylation-based deep neural network model. PLoS One. 2020;15(5):e0226461. Published 2020 May 8. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0226461. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7209244/

  67. Zheng C, Berger NA, Li L, Xu R* (2020).Epigenetic age acceleration and clinical outcomes in gliomas. PLoS One. 2020 Jul 21;15(7):e0236045. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0236045. PMID: 32692766; PMCID: PMC7373289.

  68. Zhou M, Zheng C, Xu R* (2020). Combining phenome-driven drug-target interaction prediction with patients' electronic health records-based clinical corroboration toward drug discovery. Bioinformatics. 2020;36(Supplement_1):i436-i444. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btaa451.

  69. Zhou M, Xu R*, Kaelber DC, Gurney ME* (2020) . Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF) blocking agents are associated with lower risk for Alzheimer's disease in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis. PLoS One. 2020 Mar 23;15(3):e0229819. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0229819. PMID: 32203525; PMCID: PMC7089534.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7089534/

  70. Conic, R.R.; Damiani, G.; Schrom, K.P.; Ramser, A.E.; Zheng, C.; Xu, R.; McCormick, T.S.; Cooper, K.D. (2020) Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis Cardiovascular Disease Endotypes Identified by Red Blood Cell Distribution Width and Mean Platelet Volume. J. Clin. Med. 2020, 9, 186.

  71. Zhen CL, Li L, Xu R* (2019) Association of epigenetic clock with consensus molecular subtypes and overall survival of colorectal cancer. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. August 2, 2019
    doi: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-19-0208. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6774810/

  72. Wang Q, Xu R* (2019) Data-driven multiple-level analysis of gut-microbiome-immune-joint interactions in rheumatoid arthritis, BMC Genomics (2019) 20:124. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6371598/

  73. Luo LY*, Zheng CL, Wang JL, Tan MS, Li YS, Xu R, “Analysis of disease organ as a novel phenotype towards disease genetics understanding” Journal of Biomedical Informatics. 2019 Jul;95:103235. doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2019.103235. Epub 2019 Jun 15. PMID:31207382; PMCID:PMC6644057. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6644057/

  74. Zhou MS, Chen Y, Xu R* (2018) A Drug-Side Effect Context-Sensitive Network approach for Drug Target Prediction. Bioinformatics, bty906, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6581434/

  75. Zhen CL, Xu R* (2018) The Alzheimer’s comorbidity phenome: mining from a large patient database and phenome-driven genetics prediction. JAMIA Open. 2019;2(1):131-138. doi:10.1093/jamiaopen/ooy050. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30944912/

  76. Wang Q, Xu R* (2018) Disease comorbidity-guided drug repositioning: a case study in schizophrenia. The 2018 Annual American Medical Informatics Association Symposium, Nov 3-7, San Francisco CA. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30815174/

  77. Wang Q, Xu R* . Immunotherapy-related adverse events (irAEs): extraction from FDA drug labels and comparative analysis. JAMIA Open. 2019;2(1):173-178. doi:10.1093/jamiaopen/ooy045. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30976759/

  78. Wang Q, Li L, Xu R* (2018) A systems biology approach to predict and characterize human gut microbial metabolites in colorectal cancer. Sci Rep. 2018;8(1):6225. Published 2018 Apr 18. doi:10.1038/s41598-018-24315-0. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5906656/

  79. Belur Nagaraj A, Joseph P, Kovalenko O, Wang Q, Xu R, DiFeo A. Evaluating class III antiarrhythmic agents as novel MYC targeting drugs in ovarian cancer. Gynecol Oncol. 2018;151(3):525-532. doi:10.1016/j.ygyno.2018.09.019. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6526024/

  80. Chen Y, Xu R* (2018)  Context-sensitive network analysis identifies food metabolites associated with Alzheimer's disease: an exploratory study. BMC Med Genomics. 2019;12(Suppl 1):17. Published 2019 Jan 31. doi:10.1186/s12920-018-0459-2.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/30704467/

  81. Zheng CL, Xu R* (2018) Large-scale mining disease comorbidity relationships from post-market drug adverse events surveillance data. BMC Bioinformatics. 2018;19(Suppl 17):500. Published 2018 Dec 28. doi:10.1186/s12859-018-2468-8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6309066/

  82. Nagaraj AB (co-first author), Wang Q (co-first author), Joseph P, Zheng CL, Chen Y, Kovalenko O, Singh S, Armstrong A, Resnick K, Zanotti K, Waggoner S, Xu R* (co-corresponding author), Difeo A* (co-corresponding author) (2017) Using a novel computational drug repositioning approach (DrugPredict) to Rapidly Identify Potent Drug Candidates for Cancer Treatment. Oncogene advance online publication 2 October 2017; doi: 10.1038/onc.2017.328. http://www.nature.com/onc/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/onc2017328a.html?WT.feed_name=subjects_genetics.

  83. Wang Q, McCormick TS, Ward NL, Cooper KD, Xu R* (2017) Combining mechanism-based prediction with patient-based profiling for psoriasis metabolomics biomarker discovery. The 2017 Annual American Medical Informatics Association SymposiumNov 14-18, Wahshington DC.

  84. Wang Q, Xu R* (2017) Drug repositioning for prostate cancer: using a data-driven approach to gain new insights. The 2017 Annual American Medical Informatics Association Symposium, Nov 14-18, Wahshington DC.

  85. Wang Q, Xu R* (2017) MetabolitePredict: a de-novo human metabolomics prediction system and its applications in rheumatoid arthritis. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 2017 Jul;71:222-228. doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2017.06.002. Epub 2017 Jun 7 [6] PMID:28600026.

  86. Cai, XS, Chen Y, Zhen CL, Xu R* (2017) Interrogating Patient-level Genomics and Mouse Phenomics towards Understanding Cytokines in Colorectal Cancer Metastasis. 2017 AMIA Joint Summits on Translational Science (Student paper competition finalist).

  87. Chen Y, Xu R* (2017) Context-sensitive network based disease genetics prediction and its implications in drug discovery. Bioinformatics (2017) 33 (7): 1031-1039.PMID:28062449. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btw737 [7].

  88. Gao Z, Chen Y, Cai XS, Xu R* (2017) Predict Drug Permeability to Blood-Brain-Barrier from Clinical Phenotypes. Bioinformatics (2017) 33 (6): 901-908.PMID:27993785. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btw713

  89. Chen Y, Xu R* (2016) Personalized drug repurposing for glioblastoma based on molecular subtypes. Journal of Biomedical Informatics (2016), pp. 131-138. DOI information: 10.1016/j.jbi.2016.09.019).PMID:27697594 [8]

  90. Cai, XS, Chen Y, Gao Z, Xu R* (2016) Explore Small Molecule-induced Genome-wide Transcriptional Profiles for Novel Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drug Discovery. AMIA 2016 Joint Summits on Translational Science (Marco Ramoni Distinguished Paper Award Finalist).PMID:27570643; PMCID:PMC5001780[9]

  91. Chen Y, Xu R* (2016) Phenome-based Gene Discovery Provides Information about Parkinson Disease Drug Targets. BMC Genomics, 2016, 17:493, DOI: 10.1186/s12864-016-2820-1.PMID:27586503; PMCID:PMC5009520[10].

  92. Chen Y, Cai XS, Gao Z, Wang BC, Xu R* (2016) Towards precision medicine-based therapies for glioblastoma: interrogating human disease genomics and mouse phenotypes. BMC Genomics, 17(7), 516.PMID:27557118; PMCID:PMC5001238 [11].

  93. Xu R*, Wang Q.(2016) A genomics-based systems approach towards drug repositioning for rheumatoid arthritis. BMC Genomics 2016, 17(Suppl 7):518. DOI: 10.1186/s12864-016-2910-0.PMID:27557330; PMCID:PMC5001200 [12].

  94. Xu R*, Wang Q, (2016) Towards understanding brain-gut-microbiome connections in Alzheimer’s disease. BMC Systems Biology 2016, 10:63 DOI: 10.1186/s12918-016-0307-y. PMID:27585440; PMCID:PMC5009560[13].

  95. Jingchao Ni, Mehmet Koyuturk, Hanghang Tong, Jonathan Haines, Xu R, and Xiang Zhang (2016). Disease Gene Prioritization by Integrating Tissue-Specific Molecular Networks Using a Robust Multi-Network Model, BMC Bioinformatics, 17 (1), 453, 2016.PMID:27829360; PMCID:PMC5103411[14].

  96. Stephane Meystre ; Hongfang Liu ; Rong Xu ; Sivaram Arabandi ; Kavishwar Wagholikar ; Jon Patrick ; Guergana Savova ; Chunhua Weng ; Pierre Zweigenbaum ; Dina Demner-Fushman ; Ozlem Uzuner ; Hua Xu, (2016) Natural Language Processing Working Group Pre-Symposium: Graduate Student Consortium and ‘Hackathon’ 2016 Annual American Medical Informatics Association Symposium, Chicago, IL, Nov 12-16.

  97. Xu R*, Wang Q (2015) A genome-wide drug repositioning approach toward prostate cancer drug discovery. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics). (Vol. 9096, pp. 435-437). Springer Verlag. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-19048-8 [15].

  98. Xu R*, Wang Q (2015) PhenoPredict: a disease phenome-wide drug repositioning approach towards schizophrenia drug discovery. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, pp. 348-355. DOI information: 10.1016/j.jbi.2015.06.027.PMID:26151312; PMCID:PMC4589865 [16]

  99. Xu R*, Wang Q, (2015) tcTKB: an integrated cardiovascular toxicity knowledge base for targeted cancer drugs. 2015 Annual American Medical Informatics Association Symposium, San Francisco, CA, Nov 13-18. PMID:26958275; PMCID:PMC4765587 [17]

  100. Wang Q, Xu R* (2015) DenguePredict: An Integrated Drug Repositioning System Towards Drug Discovery for Dengue. 2015 Annual American Medical Informatics Association Symposium, San Francisco, CA, Nov 13-18.PMID:26958268; PMCID:PMC4765554 [18]

  101. Chen Y, Cai XS, Xu R* (2015) Combing Human Disease Genetics and Mouse Model Phenotypes Towards Drug Repositioning for Parkinson’s Disease. 2015 Annual American Medical Informatics Association Symposium, San Francisco, CA, Nov 13-18.PMID:26958284; PMCID:PMC4765695 [19].

  102. Xu R*, & Wang, Q. (2015, April). A Genome-Wide Drug Repositioning Approach toward Prostate Cancer Drug Discovery. In Bioinformatics Research and Applications: 11th International Symposium, ISBRA 2015 Norfolk, USA, June 7-10, 2015 Proceedings (Vol. 9096, p. 435). Springer. [20].

  103. Chen Y, Li L, Zhang GQ, Xu R* (2015) Phenome-driven Disease Genetics Prediction Towards Drug Discovery. Bioinformatics 2015 31 (12): i276-i283 doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btv245.PMID:26072493; PMCID:PMC4542779[21]

  104. Xu R*, Wang Q, (2015) Large-scale automatic extraction of side effects-associated with targeted anticancer drugs from full-text oncological articles. Journal of Biomedical Informatics Jun;55:64-72. doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2015.03.009. Epub 2015 Mar 27. PMID:25817969; PMCID:PMC4582661 [22]

  105. Xu R*, Wang Q, Li L, (2015) Genome-wide systems analysis reveals strong link between colorectal cancer and trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), a gut microbial metabolite of dietary meat and fat. BMC Genomics2015, 16(Suppl 7):S4 (11 June 2015).PMID:26100814; PMCID:PMC4474417 [23].

  106. Xu R*, Wang Q, (2015) Comparing a knowledge-driven approach to a aupervised machine learning approach in large-scale extraction of drug-side effect relationships from free-text biomedical literature. BMC Bioinformatics 2015, 16(Suppl 5):S6 doi:10.1186/1471-2105-16-S5-S6. PMID:25860223; PMCID:PMC4402591 [24]

  107. Chen Y, Xu R* (2015) Network-based Gene Prediction for Plasmodium falciparum Malaria Towards Genetics-based Drug Discovery. BMC Genomics 2015, 16(Suppl 7):S9 (11 June 2015). PMID:26099491; PMCID:PMC4474419 [25]

  108. Chen Y, Li L, Xu R* (2015) Disease Comorbidity Network Guides the Detection of Molecular Evidence for the Link Between Colorectal Cancer and Obesity. 2015 AMIA Summits Transl Sci Proc, March 23, 2015 – March 27, 2015, San Francisco. CA. PMID:26306270; PMCID:PMC4525229 [26]

  109. Xu R*, Wang Q, (2015) Combining automatic table classification and relationship extraction in extracting anticancer drug-side effect pairs from full-text articles. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, Volume 53, February 2015, Pages 128–135. DOI: 10.1016/j.jbi.2014.10.002. PMID:25445920; PMCID:PMC4586056 [27]

  110. Chen Y, Xiang Zhang, GQ Zhang, Xu R* (2015) Comparative Analysis of A Novel Disease Phenotype Network Based on Clinical Manifestations. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, Feb;53:113-20. doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2014.09.007. Epub 2014 Sep 30.PMID:25277758; PMCID:PMC4452018[28]

  111. Jiang R, Chen R, Cheng S, Jiang X, Shen B, Xu R*, Yi S. (2014) Introductory Editorial: Computational Advances in Cancer Informatics. Journal of Cancer Informatics, 2014:Suppl. 1 45-48 doi: 10.4137/CIN.S19243.PMID:25484572; PMCID:PMC4216040.[29]

  112. Chen Y, Xu R* (2014) Mining cancer-specific disease comorbidities from a large observational database. Cancer Informatics 2014:Suppl. 1 37-44. doi: 10.4137/CIN.S13893.PMID:25392682; PMCID:PMC4216041[30]

  113. Chen Y, Xu R* (2014) Network Analysis of Human Disease Comorbidity Patterns Based on Large-scale Data Mining. In Bioinformatics Research and Applications (pp. 243-254). Springer International Publishing [31]

  114. Xu R*, Wang Q, (2014) Automatic construction of a large-scale and accurate drug-side-effect association knowledge base from biomedical literature. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, J Biomed Inform. 2014 Oct;51:191-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2014.05.013. Epub 2014 Jun 10. PMID:24928448; PMCID:PMC4589180.[32].

  115. Xu R*, Wang Q, (2014) A knowledge-Driven Approach in Constructing a Large-Scale Drug-Side Effect Relationship Knowledge Base for Computational Drug Discovery. International Symposium on Bioinformatics Research and Applications (ISBRA) 2014 Conference.

  116. Xu R*, Li L, Wang Q, (2014) dRiskKB: a large-scale disease-disease risk (causal) relationship knowledge base constructed from biomedical text. BMC Bioinformatics 2014, 15:105, doi:10.1186/1471-2105-15-105. PMID:24725842; PMCID:PMC3998061[33].

  117. Xu R*, Wang Q, (2014) Large-scale combining signals from both biomedical literature and the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) to improve post-marketing drug safety signal detection. BMC Bioinformatics 2014 Jan 15;15:17. doi: 10.1186/1471-2105-15-17.PMID:24428898; PMCID:PMC3906761[34].

  118. Xu R*, Wang Q, (2014) Automatic signal prioritizing and filtering approaches in detecting post-marketing cardiovascular events associated with targeted cancer drugs from the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS). Journal of Biomedical Informatics (2014), Feb;47:171-7. doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2013.10.008. Epub 2013 Oct 28.PMID:24177320; PMCID:PMC4452013[35]

  119. Cui L, Xu R, Luo Z, Wentz S, Scarberry K, Zhang GQ. Multi-topic assignment for exploratory navigation of consumer health information in NetWellness using formal concept analysis. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak 2014;14:63 PMID:25086916; PMCID:PMC4131492[36].

  120. Luo J, Zhang GQ, Wentz S, Cui L, Xu R*, SimQ: Real-Time Retrieval of Similar Consumer Health Questions J Med Internet Res, doi:10.2196/jmir.3388. PMID:25689608; PMCID:PMC4376128 [37]

  121. Ogbuji C*Xu R (2014) Lattices for Representing and Analyzing Organogenesis, Conference on Semantics in Healthcare and Life Sciences (CSHALS 2014), February 26-28, 2014, Boston, MA. [38]

  122. Xu R*, Li L, Wang Q, (2013) Towards building a disease-phenotype relationship knowledge base: large scale extraction of disease-manifestation relationship from literature. Bioinformatics 2013; doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btt359. PMID 23828786; PMCID:PMC4068009 [39].

  123. Xu R*, Wang Q, (2013) A Semi-Supervised Pattern-Learning Approach to Extract Pharmacogenomics-Specific Drug-Gene Pairs from Biomedical Literature. J Pharmacogenom Pharmacoproteomics 4: 117. doi:10.4172/2153-0645.1000117. [40]

  124. Xu R*, Wang Q, (2013) Toward creation of a cancer drug toxicity knowledge base: automatically extracting cancer drug side effect relationships from literature. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA), 2014;21:1 90-96.PMID:23686935; PMCID:PMC3912715 [41].

  125. Xu R*, Wang Q, (2013) A semi-supervised approach to extract pharmacogenomics-specific drug-gene pairs from biomedical literature for personalized medicine. Journal of Biomedical Informatics 2013 Aug;46(4):585-93. doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2013.04.001. Epub 2013 Apr 6.PMID:23570835; PMCID:PMC4452014[42].

  126. Xu R*, Wang Q, (2013) Large-scale extraction of drug-disease treatment pairs from biomedical literature for drug repurposing. BMC Bioinformatics, 2013, 14(1), 181.PMID:23742147; PMCID:PMC3702428[43]

  127. Xu R*, Wang Q, (2013) An iterative searching and ranking algorithm for prioritizing pharmacogenomics genes. Int J Comput Biol Drug Des. 2013;6(1-2):18-31. PMID 23428471[44]

  128. Chen Y, Zhang X, Zhang GQ and Xu R*, (2013) Creation and Comparative Analysis of a Novel Disease Phenotype Network Based on Clinical Manifestation. 2013 Annual American Medical Informatics Association Symposium (Accepted for Late-breaking oral presentation).

  129. Chen Y, Ren XF, Zhang GQ, Xu R*, (2013) Ontology-Guided Organ Detection to Retrieve Web Images of Disease Manifestation: Towards the Construction of a Consumer-based Health Image Library. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association(JAMIA) 2013, 20(6), 1076-1081.PMID:23792805; PMCID:PMC3822108[45].

  130. Luo ZH, Zhang GQ, Xu R*, (2013) Mining Patterns Among Adverse Events in Clinical Trials – An Exploratory Study. AMIA Summits Transl Sci Proc. 2013 Mar 18;2013:112-6.PMID:24303317; PMCID:PMC3814483 [46].

  131. Zhang GQ, Cui LC, Teagno J, Kaelber, D, Koroukian S, Xu R, (2013) Merging Ontology Navigation with Query Construction for Web-based Medicare Data Exploration, AMIA Summits Transl Sci Proc. 2013 Mar 18;2013:285-9.PMID:24303282; PMCID:PMC3845758[47]

  132. Luo L1, Xu R, Zhang GQ. (2013) Dissecting the Ambiguity of FMA Concept Names Using Taxonomy and Partonomy Structural Information, 2013 AMIA Summits Transl Sci Proc. 2013 Mar 18;2013:157-61.PMID:24303256; PMCID:PMC3845762 [48]

  133. Luo L1, Rowbottom J, Craker J, Xu R, Zhang GQ.(2013) VINSIA: Visual Navigator for Surgical Information Access. Military Medicine. 2013 Jul;178(7):746-52. doi: 10.7205/MILMED-D-12-00406.PMID 23820348.[49]

  134. Chen Y, Ren XF, Zhang GQ, Xu R*, (2012) Ontology Guided Approach to Retrieving Disease Manifestation Images for Health Image Base Construction. IEEE Healthcare Informatics, Imaging and Systems Biology (HISB) 2012 (Best Research Paper Award).[50]

  135. Ogbuji C, Xu R*, (2012) Integrating large, disparate biomedical ontologies to boost organ development network connectivity. Data Integration in the Life Sciences 2012 (DILS 2012).[51]

  136. Xu R*, Wang Q, (2012) A knowledge-driven conditional approach to extract pharmacogenomics specific drug-gene relationships from free text, Journal of Biomedical Informatics. 2012 Oct;45(5):827-34.PMID:22561026; PMCID:PMC4589154 [52]

  137. Chen Y, Zhang GQ, Xu R*, (2012) Semi-supervised Image Classification for Automatic Construction of a Health Image Library, 2nd ACM SIGHIT International Health Informatics Symposium, 2012.[53]

  138. Xu R, Musen M, Shah N*, (2010) A Comprehensive Analysis of Five Million UMLS Metathesaurus Terms Using Eighteen Million MEDLINE Citations. Annual American Medical Informatics Association Symposium 2010. pp. 907-911.PMID:21347110; PMCID:PMC3041393[54]

  139. Parai, PK, Jonquet C, Xu R, Musen M, Shah N*, (2010) The Lexicon Builder Web Service: Building Custom Lexicons from Two Hundred Biomedical Ontologies. Annual American Medical Informatics Association Symposium 2010. pp. 587–591.PMID:21347046; PMCID:PMC3041331[55]

  140. Xu R, Das A, Garber AM*, (2009) Unsupervised Method for Extracting Machine Understandable Medical Knowledge from a Large Free Text Collection. Annual American Medical Informatics Association Symposium, 2009. pp. 709-713.PMID:20351945; PMCID:PMC2815389[56] (Student Paper Finalist)

  141. Xu R, Morgan A, Das A, Garber AM*, (2009) Investigation of Unsupervised Pattern Learning Techniques for Bootstrap Construction of a Medical Treatment Lexicon. Association for Computational Linguistics BioNLP Workshop, 2009. pp. 63-70. [57]

  142. Xu R, Supekar K, Morgan A, Das A, Garber AM*, (2008) Unsupervised Method for Automatic Construction of a Disease Dictionary from a Large Free Text Collection. Annual American Medical Informatics Association Symposium, 2008. pp. 820-824.PMID:18999169; PMCID:PMC265608769[58]

  143. Xu R, Garten Y, Supekar K, Altman RB, Garber AM*, (2007) Extracting Subject Demographics From Abstracts of Randomized Clinical Trials. World Congress on Medical and Health Informatics(MEDINFO), 2007. pp. 824-828. PMID 17911777[59]

  144. Xu R, Supekar K, Huang Y, Das A, Garber AM*. Combining Text Classification and Hidden Markov Modeling Techniques for Structuring Randomized Clinical Trial Abstracts (2006), Annual American Medical Informatics Association Symposium, 2006. pp. 824-828.PMID:17238456; PMCID:PMC1839538[60]

Education

Doctor of Philosophy
Biomedical Informatics
Stanford University
2010
Master of Science
Computer Science
Stanford University
Certificate
Entrepreneurship, Graduate School of Business
Stanford University
Master of Science
Biology
Case Western Reserve University
Bachelor of Science
Biology
Peking University

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