School of Biomedical Sciences cordially invites you to join the following seminar:

Speaker: Dr. Ruidong Xue, Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator, Peking University Health Science Center
Talk Title: Co-option of tumor and immune microenvironment at spatial and single cell resolution

Date: 28 May 2025 (Wednesday)
Time: 11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Venue: Lecture Theatre 1, G/F, William M.W. Mong Block, 21 Sassoon Road
Host: Professor Stephanie Ma

Biography

Dr. Xue is an assistant professor and “BOYA-Young” group leader in Peking University. He is a principal investigator with multiple affiliations in Peking University Medicine, including Yunnan Baiyao Medical Research Centre, International Cancer Institute, and the First Hospital. He is also a member of State Key Laboratory of Molecular Oncology. He obtained his PhD from PKU in 2018. After a short exchange in UCL, he served as a junior investigator in PKU First Hospital. At 2023, Dr. Xue started his independent group at PKU Medicine. Research in the Xue lab focuses on big-data and bioinformatics driven oncology, covering topics including tumor clonal evolution, TME regulation, and their crosstalk. Dr. Xue published numerous research papers, including Nature (2024, 2022), Cancer Cell (2024, 2019), and Gastroenterology (2022, 2016). His work has been selected as Cell Press Paper of the Year 2019 China and 2022 Top Ten Advances in Bioinformatics in China. He is a leading PI of National Science and Technology Major Project from MOST, China. He is also the recipient of NSFC Excellent Young Scientists Fund and Beijing NOVA Fund.

Abstract

Cancer is an ever-evolving multicellular ecosystem, in which different tumor subclones compete for survival advantage and dynamically interact with the immune and stromal cells in its microenvironment. Extensive tumor heterogeneity, observed in both tumor cells and TME cells, is a major hurdle for targeted therapy and immunotherapy. Our understanding of the cooperation between tumor clonal evolution and TME dynamics is still limited. Recent advances in single cell sequencing and spatially-resolved methods have enabled us to dissect the tumor heterogeneity at unprecedented resolution. In this presentation, I will introduce how we integrate these cutting-edge technologies with bioinformatics, as well as functional experiments, to investigate the complex tumor ecosystem. I will introduce our research on the tumor clonal evolution model of liver cancer, its implications on the Chinese Liver Cancer Atlas project. I will also talk about the important roles of various subsets of tumor-associated neutrophils (TANs) in liver cancer, including PD-L1+ TANs and CCL4+ TANs. At last, I will discuss how we use these new methods to dissect the tumor-immune interplay in situ and invasive acral melanoma and to identify key determinants of therapeutic response in nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

ALL ARE WELCOME.