R. Stephanie Huang, PhD

Dr. Huang is a Tenured Professor at the Department of Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology, University of Minnesota. She is also an Associate Director for the Institute of Personalized Medicine | Pharmacogenomics U of M Alliance (PUMA-IPM) and a member of the Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota. She is a member of American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG), and American Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (ASCPT). She serves on the editorial board of Annals of Translational Medicine and Frontiers in Pharmacology. To date, she has published over 90 peer-reviewed research papers many of which are in high caliber journals, e.g., Nature, Nature Medicine, PNAS, Blood, Cancer Research, Genome Biology and American Journal of Human Genetics. Dr. Huang is a board certified clinical pharmacologist with extensive training in genetics, molecular and cell biology, clinical trials and high throughput data analysis.

pharmacogenomics, cancer chemotherapy, miRNA, computational biology

• 2006 Aflac Scholar-in-Training Award for American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Molecular Diagnostics Meeting
• 2006 Awardee of 2007 Charles Huggins lecture series
• 2006 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Pharmacogenomics meeting Travel Award
• 2007 American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (ASCPT) Presidential Trainee Award
• 2007 American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Merck Scholar-in-Training Award
• 2007 First place poster presentation in the Midwest Symposium on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (MSCBB)
• 2008 Nominated for the “Future Leaders, New Directions” symposium at the 2008 AACR Annual meeting by the University of Chicago Cancer Research Center
• 2008 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Pharmacogenomics meeting Travel Award
• 2010, 2011 Combined Annual meeting of Central Society of Clinical Research (CSCR) and Midwestern Section American Federation for Medical Research (MWAFMR) Travel Award and K grant Award
• 2012 The first recipient of the CSCR Featured New Investigator Award
• 2012 ASCO Markers in Cancer 2012 Diagnostic Development Tutorial: Developing Biomarkers from Discovery to Oncology Practice: From Hypothesis to Product Travel Grant Award
• 2013 University of Chicago Department of Medicine (DOM) Research Day Best in Show Faculty award
• 2013 Central Society of Clinical and Translational Research CSCTR Outstanding Young Investigator Award and K award
• 2014 CSCTR K award
• 2015 Member of the Month from ASCPT (January, 2015) 
• 2015 American Federation for Medical Research (AFMR) Scholar award (April 2015)
• 2018 PGRN January Featured Investigator 
• 2019 7th annual University of Chicago Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacogenomics Fellow’s Choice Lecture speaker 
• 2019-20 University of Minnesota Northern LITeS cohort leadership training
• 2020 University of Minnesota CTSI Mentor of the Year nomination 
• 2021 University of Minnesota COGS Outstanding advisor award

AACR, ASHG, ASCPT

• Chinese
• English

Research Interests

Pharmacogenomics and computational biology

Research Methods/Techniques

computational biology, genome-wide analysis, molecular biology and cell biology

pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics

1. Geeleher P, Cox NJ, Huang RS. Clinical drug response can be predicted using baseline gene expression levels and in vitro drug sensitivity in cell lines. Genome Biol. 2014 Mar 3;15(3):R47. PubMed PMID: 24580837; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4054092. 
2. Geeleher P, Andrey Loboda, Divya Lenkala, Fan Wang, Bonnie LaCroix, Sanja Karovic, Jacqueline Wang, Michael Nebozhyn, Michael Chisamore, James Hardwick, Michael L. Maitland and Huang RS. Predicting response to histone deacetylase inhibitors using high-throughput genomics. JNCI. 2015. 107(11): doi: 10.1093/jnci/djv247. PMID: 26296641. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4643634.
3. Geeleher P, Cox NJ and Huang RS. Cancer biomarker discovery is improved by accounting for variability in general levels of drug sensitivity in pre-clinical models. Genome Biology. 2016. 17(1):190. PMID: 27654937. PMCID: PMC5031330.
4. Geeleher P, Zhang Z, Wang F, Gruener RF, Nath A, Morrison G, Bhutra S, Grossman RL, and Huang RS. Discovering novel pharmacogenomic biomarkers by imputing drug response in cancer patients from large genomics studies. Genome Res. 2017. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 28847918.
5. Geeleher P, Gamazon ER, Seoighe C, Cox NJ and Huang RS. Consistency in large pharmacogenomic studies. Nature. 2016. 540 (7631): E1-E2. PMID: 27905415.
6. Huang RS, Duan S, Bleibel WK, Kistner EO, Zhang W, Clark TA, Chen TX, Schweitzer AC, Blume JE, Cox NJ, Dolan ME. A genome-wide approach to identify genetic variants that contribute to etoposide-induced cytotoxicity. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007 Jun 5;104(23):9758-63. PubMed PMID: 17537913; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC1887589.
7. Ziliak D, O'Donnell PH, Im HK, Gamazon ER, Chen P, Delaney S, Shukla S, Das S, Cox NJ, Vokes EE, Cohen EE, Dolan ME, Huang RS. Germline polymorphisms discovered via a cell-based, genome-wide approach predict platinum response in head and neck cancers. Transl Res. 2011 May;157(5):265-72. PubMed PMID: 21497773; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3079878.
8. Huang RS, Johnatty SE, Gamazon ER, Im HK, Ziliak D, Duan S, Zhang W, Kistner EO, Chen P, Beesley J, Mi S, O'Donnell PH, Fraiman YS, Das S, Cox NJ, Lu Y, Macgregor S, Goode EL, Vierkant RA, Fridley BL, Hogdall E, Kjaer SK, Jensen A, Moysich KB, Grasela M, Odunsi K, Brown R, Paul J, Lambrechts D, Despierre E, Vergote I, Gross J, Karlan BY, Defazio A, Chenevix-Trench G, Dolan ME. Platinum sensitivity-related germline polymorphism discovered via a cell-based approach and analysis of its association with outcome in ovarian cancer patients. Clin Cancer Res. 2011 Aug 15;17(16):5490-500. PubMed PMID: 21705454; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3160494.
9. Weng L, Ziliak D, Im HK, Gamazon ER, Philips S, Nguyen AT, Desta Z, Skaar TC, Flockhart DA, Huang RS. Genome-wide discovery of genetic variants affecting tamoxifen sensitivity and their clinical and functional validation. Ann Oncol. 2013 Jul;24(7):1867-73. PubMed PMID: 23508821; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3690911.
10. Gamazon ER, Ziliak D, Im HK, LaCroix B, Park DS, Cox NJ, Huang RS. Genetic architecture of microRNA expression: implications for the transcriptome and complex traits. Am J Hum Genet. 2012 Jun 8;90(6):1046-63. PubMed PMID: 22658545; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3370272.
11. LaCroix B, Gamazon ER, Lenkala D, Im HK, Geeleher P, Ziliak D, Cox NJ, Huang RS. Integrative analyses of genetic variation, epigenetic regulation, and the transcriptome to elucidate the biology of platinum sensitivity. BMC Genomics. 2014 Apr 16;15:292. PubMed PMID: 24739237; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3996490.
12. Lenkala D, LaCroix B, Gamazon ER, Geeleher P, Im HK, Huang RS. The impact of microRNA expression on cellular proliferation. Hum Genet. 2014 Jul;133(7):931-8. PubMed PMID: 24609542.
13. Wang Fan, Chang Jeremy, Kao Chester, and Huang RS. High expression of miR-532-5p, a tumor suppressor, leads to better prognosis in ovarian cancer both in vivo and in vitro. Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, 2016. 15(5): 1123-1131. PMID: 26873729. PMCID: PMC4873383.

Avon Foundation research grant