Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty Member

Wei Xu Ph.D.

Research Interests

• Biostatistics and Bioinformatics
• Statistical Genetics
• Cancer Clinical and Translational Research
• Clinical Trial Design and Analysis
• Statistical Modeling and Data Mining
• Cancer Big Data and AI algorithm

Education & Training History

2006 Ph.D. University of Toronto, Biostatistics

2003 M.Sc. Dalhousie University, Statistics

1992 B.Eng. Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Engineering

Other Affiliations

Department Head, Biostatistics Department, University Health Network

Current Research Projects

(2023-2028) Early cancer detection in children and adults with familial cancer syndromes across Canada (CCS)

(2022-2025) Canadian Training Platform for Trials Leveraging Existing Networks (CIHR)

(2021-2026) 3D genome architecture modulates genetic risk in prostate cancer (CIHR)

(2021-2024) Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, and Microbiome Research (PMCF)

(2020-2026) Experimental Therapeutics-Clinical Trials Network with Phase I Emphasis North American Star Consortium (NCI)

(2019-2023) Development of the first pre-operative serum exosomal miRNA test to guide treatment decision in prostate cancer (CIHR)

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Selected Publications (selected from 450 peer-reviewed publications)

Deng Y, Tu D, O’Callaghan CJ, Liu G, Xu W. Two-stage multivariate Mendelian randomization on multiple outcomes with mixed distributions. Stat Methods Med Res. 2023 Jun 20:9622802231181220.

Deng Y, Tu D, O’Callaghan CJ, Jonker DJ, Karapetis CS, Shapiro J, Liu G, Xu W. A Bayesian approach for two-stage multivariate Mendelian randomization with mixed outcomes. Stat Med. 2023 Mar 30. doi: 10.1002/sim.9721.

Zhang J, Kong W, Hu P, Jonker D, Moore M, Ringash J, Shapiro J, Zalcberg J, Simes J, Tu D, O’Callaghan CJ, Liu G, Xu W. Clustering on longitudinal quality-of-life measurements using growth mixture models for clinical prognosis: Implementation on CCTG/AGITG CO.20 trial. Cancer Med. 2022 Oct 24. doi: 10.1002/cam4.5341.

Chen B, Xu W. Functional response regression model on correlated longitudinal microbiome sequencing data. Stat Methods Med Res. 2022 Feb;31(2):361-371.

Ma H, Pang W, Sun L, Xu W. Augmented weighting estimators for the additive rates model under multivariate recurrent event data with missing event type. Stat Med. 2022 Jun 28. doi: 10.1002/sim.9509.

Jain R, Xu W. RHDSI: A novel dimensionality reduction based algorithm on high dimensional feature selection with interactions. Information Sciences, Volume 574, 2021, 590-605.

Xu W, Huang SH, Su J, Gudi S, O’Sullivan B. Statistical fundamentals on cancer research for clinicians: Working with your statisticians. Clinical Translational Radiation Oncology 27, 75-84, 2021

Hao M, Liu K, Xu W, Zhao X. Semiparametric Inference for the Functional Cox Model. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 116:535, 1319-1329. 2021

Shestopaloff K, Dong M, Gao F, Xu W. DCMD: Distance-based classification using mixture distributions on microbiome data. PLoS Comput Biol. 2021 Mar 12;17(3):e1008799.

Sharma D, Xu W. phyLoSTM: a novel deep learning model on disease prediction from longitudinal microbiome data. Bioinformatics. 2021 Jul 2:btab482. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btab482.

Chen B, Xu W. Generalized Estimating Equation Modeling on Correlated Microbiome Sequencing Data with Longitudinal Measures. Plos Computational Biology. 2020 Sep 8;16(9):e1008108.

Bai H, Zhong Y, Gao Y, Xu W. Multivariate Mixed Response Model with Pairwise Composite Likelihood Method. Stats 2020, 3(3), 203-220;

Hao M, Zhao X, Xu W. Competing risk modeling and testing for X-chromosome genetic association. Computational Statistics & Data Analysis. Volume 151, November 2020, 107007.

O’Neill AC, Yang D, Roy M, Sebastiampillai S, Hofer SOP, Xu W. Development and Evaluation of a Machine Learning Prediction Model for Flap Failure in Microvascular Breast Reconstruction. Ann Surg Oncol. 2020 Mar 9.

Sharma D, Paterson AD, Xu W. TaxoNN: Ensemble of Neural Networks on Stratified Microbiome Data for Disease Prediction. Bioinformatics. 2020 May 25:btaa542.

Espin-Garcia O, Croitoru K, Xu W. Afinite mixture model for X-chromosome association with an emphasis on microbiome data analysis. Genet Epidemiology. 2019 Jan 18.

Han D, Hao M, Qu L, Xu W. A Novel Model for the X-chromosome Inactivation Association on Survival Data. Statistical Methods in Medical Research. Stat Methods Med Res. 2019 Jun 30:962280219859037.

Yang D, Xu W. Statistical modeling on human microbiome sequencing data. Big Data and Information Analytics, 2019, 4(1): 1-12. doi: 10.3934/bdia.2019001.

Shestopaloff K, Escobar MD, Xu W. Analyzing differences between microbiome communities using mixture distributions. Stat Med. 2018 Jul 23. doi: 10.1002/sim.7896.

L Xu, AD Paterson, W Xu. Bayesian Latent Variable Models for Hierarchical Clustered Count Outcomes with Repeated Measures in Microbiome Studies. Genetic Epidemiology 2017 Jan 22. doi: 10.1002/gepi.22031.

Xu W, Hao M. A unified partial likelihood approach for X-chromosome association on time to event outcomes. Genetic Epidemiology 2017 Nov 26. doi: 10.1002/gepi.22097.

Xu W, Ma J, Greenwood CMT, Paterson AD, Bull SB. Model-Free Linkage Analysis of a Binary Trait. Methods Mol Biol. 2017;1666:343-373.

Korpanty GJ, Eng L, Qiu X, Olusesan Faluyi O, Renouf DJ, Cheng D, Patel D, Chen Z, Tse BC, Knox JJ, Dodbiba L, Teichman J, Azad AK, Wong R, Darling G, Reisman D, Cuffe S, Liu G, Xu W. Association of BRM promoter polymorphisms and esophageal adenocarcinoma outcome. Oncotarget. 2017 Apr 25;8(17):28093-28100.

Xu L, Paterson AD, Xu W. Bayesian Latent Variable Models for Hierarchical Clustered Count Outcomes with Repeated Measures in Microbiome Studies. Genetic Epidemiology 2017 Jan 22. doi: 10.1002/gepi.22031.

Turpin W, Espin-Garcia O, Xu W, Silverberg M, Kevans D, Smith M, Guttman D, Griffiths A, Panancionne R, Otley A, Xu L, Shestopaloff K, Moreno-Hagelsieb G, The GEM Project Research Consortium, Paterson A, Croitoru K. Association of Host Genome with Intestinal Microbial Composition in a Large Healthy Cohort. Nature Genetics 2016 Oct 3. doi: 10.1038/ng.3693.

Xu W, Che J, Kong Q. Recursive Partitioning Method on Competing Risk Outcomes. Cancer Informatics. 2016:Suppl. 2 9-16.

O’Sullivan B, Huang SH, Su J, Garden AS, Sturgis EM, Dahlstrom K, Lee N, Riaz N, Pei X, Koyfman SA, Adelstein D, Burkey BB, Friborg J, Kristensen CA, Gothelf AB, Hoebers F, Kremer B, Speel EJ, Bowles DW, Raben D, Karam SD, Yu E, Xu W. A Proposal for UICC/AJCC Pre-treatment TNM Staging for HPV-related Oropharyngeal Cancer by the International Collaboration on Oropharyngeal Cancer Network for Staging (ICON-S): A Comparative Multi-Centre Cohort Study. Lancet Oncology. 2016 Apr; 17(4):440-51