Dr Qi Zhao is currently an professor of cancer genomics in Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center (SYSUCC). He gained his Ph.D of Bioinformatics at Sun Yat-sen university in 2016.  Then he finished a 3-year Postdoc training in Oncology at Sun Yat-sen Cancer Center. During the period of postdoc training, Dr Zhao was one of the core members in bioinformatics center of the department and mainly charged with development and deployment of NGS pipeline in high performance computing clusters. He is also in charge of cancer microbiome research platform.  He joined Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center as an Associate Professor in November 2019. He focus on GI cancer bioinformatics and mainly work on related bioinformatic tool development and biomarker discovery from multi-omic cancer dataset. He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers, including some papers in high impact journals such asCance cell, Gut,JAMA oncology, Cell Research, Science Transl Med, Nature Communications, EMBO Mol Med. Nucleic Acid Res, Briefings in Bioinformatics.

Google scholar links: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=j7LCthMAAAAJ&hl=en

ResearchGate links: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Qi_Zhao11

Github links: https://github.com/likelet

Development of novel algorithm, application, database tools for cancer omic data analysis; Identification of ICI biomarkers for tumor diagnosis and prognosis with machine-learning approaches: Dissecting genomic-clinical associations in GI cancers.

1. Zhao Q#, Huang R#, Wang C#, Hu J#, Nie R#, Jian R, Wang Y, Wang D, Liang C, Chen Y, Chen Y, Wu C, Zhang J, Chen J, An N, Jin Y, Guan W, Wang Z, Li Y, Sun X, Chen Y, Wang W, Qiu H, Zhou Z, Wang F, Xu RH, Yuan S. Dissecting genetic and immune drivers of heterogeneous responses to neoadjuvant immunochemotherapy in gastric cancer.Cancer Cell. 2026 Feb 19:S1535-6108(26)00054-1. doi: 10.1016/j.ccell.2026.01.015. Cover Story.

2. Qi Zhao#, Xin Zhou#, Jingxing Wu#, Jieyi Cai, Xiaoqiong Bao, Lin Tang , Chaoye Wang, Chunlei Liu, Yukai Wang, Yuyan Teng, Mohan Zheng, Weiping Mu , Zhixiang Zuo, Yubin Xie, Xiaotong Luo, Jian Ren. BioTreasury: a community-based repository enabling indexing and rating of bioinformatics tools.Science China. Life sciences. 2024 Feb;67(2):221-229.  Cover Story.

3. Shixiang Wang#, Chen-Yi Wu#, Ming-Ming He #, Jia-Xin Yong #, Yan-Xing Chen, Li-Mei Qian, Jin-Ling Zhang, Zhao-Lei Zeng, Rui-Hua Xu, Feng Wang,Qi Zhao*. Machine learning-based extrachromosomal DNA identification in large-scale cohorts reveals its clinical implications in cancer. Nature Communications. 2024 Feb 19;15(1):1515.

4. Zhang Y, Chen J, She Y, Fang Z, Zhang Y, Ruan D, Guo W, Liao J, Zhou W, Lao J, Fang W, Pan X, Kang W, Wang Z, Wu Y, Deng R, Tian L, Wang L, Huang H, Zheng J, Yan Y, Lu H, Wang R, Yaeger R,Zhao Q*, Liao W*, Wang F*, Gao Y*. Paneth-like transition drives resistance to dual targeting of KRAS and EGFR in colorectal cancer.Cancer Cell. 2025 Nov 13:S1535-6108(25)00451-9. doi: 10.1016/j.ccell.2025.10.010.

5. Xiang S, Chen Y, Wang C, Wang M, He Y, Liu Z, Zhang JL, Yang LP, Wei YF, Wu QN, Wang ZX, Xi SY, Li Z, Zhao Q*, Xu RH* and  Wang F*. Alleviated T cell exhaustion and SLC1A3-mediatedstroma-remodelling dictate chemoimmunotherapy efficacy in oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma.Gut. 2026 Jan 8;75(2):252-264. doi: 10.1136/gutjnl-2025-335642. PMID: 40983502.

6. Zhao Qi#, Wang Feng#,*, Chen Yan-Xing#, Chen Shifu#, Yao Yi-Chen, Zeng Zhao-Lei, Jiang Teng-Jia, Wang Ying-Nan, Wu Chen-Yi, Jing Ying, Huang You-Sheng, Zhang Jing, Wang Zi-Xian, He Ming-Ming, Pu Heng-Ying, Mai Zong-Jiong, Wu Qi-Nian, Long Renwen, Zhang Xiaoni, Huang Tanxiao, Xu Mingyan, Qiu Miao-Zheng, Luo Hui-Yan, Li Yu-Hong, Zhang Dong-Shen, Jia Wei-Hua, Chen Gong, Ding Pei-Rong, Li Li-Ren, Lu Zheng-Hai, Pan Zhi-Zhong, Xu Rui-Hua*. Comprehensive profiling of 1015 patients’ exomes reveals genomic-clinical associations in colorectal cancer.Nature Communications, 2022. 13(1) 1-17.

7. Wu HX, Chen YK, Wang YN, Chen JY, Xiang SJ, Jin Y, Wang ZX, Huang CY, Yang LP, He Y, Guan WL, Bai L, Chen YX, Wang M, Wang CY, Huang RJ, Huang Y, Zhang JL, Lv ZD, Yang SQ, Xu RH,Zhao Q*&Wang F*. Dissecting small cell carcinoma of the esophagus ecosystem by single-cell transcriptomic analysis. Mol Cancer.2025 May 15;24(1):142.

8. Lu-Ping Yang, Teng-Jia Jiang, Ming-Ming He, Yi-Hong Ling, Zi-Xian Wang, Hao-Xiang Wu, Zhen Zhang, Rui-Hua Xu, Feng Wang,Shu-Qiang Yuan*,Qi Zhao*. (2023). Comprehensive genomic characterization of sporadic synchronous colorectal cancer: Implications for treatment optimization and clinical outcome.CellReports Medicine, 4(10), 101222.

9. Miao-Zhen Qiug#,Chaoye Wangg#, Zhiying Wug#,Qi Zhao#, Zhibin Zhao#, Chun-Yu Huang, Wenwei Wu, Li-Qiong Yang, Zhi-Wei Zhou, Yu Zheng, Hong-Ming Pan, Zexian Liu, Zhao-Lei Zeng, Hui-Yan Luo, Feng Wang, Feng-Hua Wang, Si-Yu Yang, Meng-Xing Huang, Zhexiong Lian, Haiyan Zhang* & Rui-Hua Xu*. (2023). Dynamic single-cell mapping unveils Epstein‒Barr virus-imprinted T-cell exhaustion and on-treatment response.Signal transduction and targeted therapy, 8(1), 370.

10. Wen Zhou# , Ming-Ming He#, Feng Wang, Rui-Hua Xu, Fang Wang,Qi Zhao*. Latent class analysis-derived classification improves the cancer-specific death stratification of molecular subtyping in colorectal cancer.Npj Precision Oncology. 2023 Jun 23;7(1):60