• Cancer genomics
• Mutational processes
• Gene regulation
• Bioinformatics and computational biology
• Mass spectrometry

Dr Wong is an Associate Professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. He was formerly an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and an Associate Professor at the Prince of Wales Clinical School at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. He received his B.Sc (Hons I), specialising in Bioinformatics from the University of Sydney in 2002. As an Oxford-Australia scholar, he went on to complete a D.Phil in Bioanalytical Chemistry at the University of Oxford, UK in 2007. This was followed by an Irish Government post-doctoral fellowship at the Conway Institute of Biomolecular & Biomedical Research, University College Dublin, specialising in Chemical Proteomics, before he returned to Sydney to establish his research group. He has published over 90 original peer-reviewed journal articles with around half as first or senior author in journals including Nature, Cell Reports, Genome Biology, Blood, Molecular Biology & Evolution and Nucleic Acids Research. His current research is focused on the study of mutational processes in cancer and their ultimate effect on gene regulation and function.

Our laboratory is interested in understanding how mutations occur in cancer and what effect this has on the way genes are used. Understanding the mechanism by which these mutations form in the genome is important because it can provide us with insights into why cancers develop and how it may be prevented. We are also interested in studying how mutations can alter the regulation of gene expression, particularly its effect on transcription factor binding at cis-regulatory elements. We work on all cancer types with cancer genomics data, but have a strong focus on skin cancers, blood cancers and gastrointestinal cancers. Our research uses makes use of bioinformatics and computational techniques to analyse existing large genomics datasets such as those from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) with a focus on the integrative analysis of different types of data.

We are currently in the process of moving to HKU and have openings for students to work on:

• Interaction of germline variation, mutational processes and cancer driver mutations.
• Examining the interplay of DNA lesion formation, DNA repair and mutation formation.
• Profiling the role of modified nucleotides in DNA mutagenesis.

• Exploring the origins of cancer through single cell RNA-seq.

1. Hu F, Barbour JA, Poulos RC, Katainen R, Aaltonen LA, Wong JWH (2020) Mutational processes of distinct POLE exonuclease domain mutants drive an enrichment of a specific TP53 mutation in colorectal cancer. PLoS Genetics 16(2): e1008572
2. Bao X, Liu Z, Zhang W, Gladysz K, Fung YME, Tian G, Xiong Y, Wong JWH*, Yuen KWY* & Li XD* (2019) Glutarylation of Histone H4 Lysine 91 Regulates Chromatin Dynamics Mol Cell 76(4):660-675
3. Poulos RC, Wong Y, Ryan R, Pang H, Wong JWH (2018) Analysis of 7,815 cancer exomes reveals novel associations between mutational processes and somatic driver mutations. PLoS Genetics 14(11):e1007779
4. Poulos RC, Olivier J, Wong JWH (2017) The interaction between cytosine methylation and processes of DNA replication and repair shape the mutational landscape of cancer genomes. Nuc Acids Res 45(13):7786-7795
5. Perera D, Poulos RC, Shah A, Beck D, Pimanda JE, Wong JWH (2016) Differential DNA repair underlies mutation hotspots at active promoters in cancer genomes. Nature 532:259-263
6. Poulos RC, Thoms JAI, Guan YF, Unnikrishnan A, Pimanda JE & Wong JWH (2016) Functional mutations form at CTCF/cohesin binding sites in melanoma due to uneven nucleotide excision repair across the motif. Cell Reports 17(11):2865-2872
2. Beck D, Thoms JAI, Palu C, Herold T, Shah A, Olivier J, Boelen L, Huang Y, Chacon D,  Brown A, Babic M, Hahn C, Perugini M, Zhou X, Huntly BJ, Schwarzer A, Klusmann J-H, Berdel WE, Wormann B, Buchner T, Hiddemann W, Bohlander SK, To LB, Scott HS, Lewis ID, D’Andrea RJ, Wong JWH* & Pimanda JE* (2018) A four-gene LincRNA expression signature predicts risk in multiple cohorts of acute myeloid leukemia patients. Leukaemia 32(2):263-272

1. General Research Fund (2021-2023) - Using somatic mutational landscape to resolve the origin of hepatocellular carcinoma at the single cell level (HKD$1.2M)
2. Collaborative Research Fund (2020-2023) - Integrative Chemical Biology Approaches to Decipher Histone Marks on H3K79 (Co-PI, HKD$ 6.5M)
3. National Health and Medical Research Council Project Grant (2017-2019) - The role of somatic mutations in CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF) binding sites in cancer (Funded: AUD$371,000)

1. Cancer Researcher of the Year - Cure Cancer Australia Foundation (2016)
2. Future Fellow - Australian Research Council (2014)
3. Early Career Development Fellow - Cancer Institute NSW (2012)
4. Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow - University of NSW (2011)
5. Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow - Irish Research Council (2007)

• Jayne Barbour (Postdoc)
• Xiao-qiang Zhu (PhD)
• Hu Fang (PhD)
• Kornelia Gładysz (KCL-HKU joint PhD)
• Ian Lee (PhD)
• Becca Li (Research assistant)
• Mark Yang (Research assistant)
• May Cheung (Technician)
• Tommy Wong (Technician)