Principal Investigator — Division of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics

Zhichao Liu
(870) 543-7121
NCTRResearch@fda.hhs.gov  

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About  |  Publications  |  Lab Member

Background

Dr. Zhichao Liu's background spans the fields of chemistry, biology, and computer science. In the past eight years, he took part in several cutting-edge projects in both industry and academia. Specifically, he developed several high-efficacy, quality-control strategies of processing analytical techniques and applied them to the tobacco industry. Furthermore, Dr. Liu focused on developing the standard pipeline to balance the efficacy and safety in drug repositioning and drug-safety areas. The research aims to provide the standard in silico pipeline for drug repositioning and early drug-safety detection by retrieving, integrating, and organizing the information from chemical, biological, and clinical spaces. This helps the industry seek the optimal route to accelerate the drug-development efficacy from an advanced regulatory-sciences perspective. Recently, Dr. Liu's interest has shifted to apply Artificial Intelligence (AI) to solve regulatory-related questions and promote advanced regulatory sciences.

Research Interests

• Applying AI and deep learning for promoting precision medicine

• Developing innovative approaches for in silico drug repositioning for rare diseases

• Developing flexible and integrative risk-prediction systems for drug-safety evaluation

• Developing and applying standard pipeline for genomic data (e.g. microarray/NGS) analysis for drug- safety and -efficacy questions

• Developing strategies and frameworks to facilitate text-mining performance for diverse document types and infrastructures

• Designing and developing databases and visualization systems that allow interactive exploration of complex interior relationships embedded in biological-data profiles

Professional Societies/National and International Groups

Society of Toxicology
Member
2015 – Present

American Chemical Society
Member
2012 – Present

Arkansas Bioinformatics Consortium
Member
2012 – Present

International Society for Computational Biology
Member
2012 – Present

MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society
Member
2012 – Present

Select Publications

Publication titles are linked to text abstracts on PubMed.

Toxicogenomics: A 2020 Vision.
Liu Z., Huang R., Roberts R., and Tong W.
Trends in Pharmacological Sciences. 2019, 40(2), 92-103.
 

Drug-Induced Rhabdomyolysis Atlas (DIRA) for Idiosyncratic Adverse Drug Reaction Management.
Wen Z., Liang Y., Hao Y., Delavan B., Huang R., Mikailov M., Tong W., Li M., and Liu Z*.
Drug Discovery Today. 2019, 24 (1), 9-15.
 

Computational Drug Repositioning for Rare Diseases in the Era of Precision Medicine.
Delavan B., Roberts R., Tong W., and Liu Z.
Drug Discovery Today. 2018, 23 (2), 382-394.
 

Transcriptional Responses Reveal Similarities Between Preclinical Rat Liver Testing Systems.
Liu Z., Delavan B., Roberts R., and Tong W.
Frontiers in Genetics. 2018, 9, 74.
 

Lessons Learned from Two Decades of Anticancer Drugs.
Liu Z., Delavan B., Roberts R., and Tong W.
Trends in Pharmacological Sciences. 2017, 38 (10), 852-872.
 

In Vitro to In Vivo Extrapolation (IVIVE) for Drug-Induced Liver Injury Using a Pair Ranking (PRank) Method.
Liu Z.*, Fang H., Borlak J., Roberts R., and Tong W.
ALTEX. 2017, doi.org/10.14573/altex.1610311.
 

Potential Reuse of Oncologic Drugs for the Treatment of Rare Diseases.
Liu Z.*, Fang H., Slikker W. Jr., and Tong W.
Trends in Pharmacological Sciences. 2016, 37, 843-857.
 

A Genomic Approach Reveals Mechanistically Linked Serum MiRNAs to Distinguish Between Drug Induced and Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease of Different Grades.
Liu Z., Wang Y., Borlak J., and Tong W.
Scientific Reports. 2016, 6, 23709.
 

Deciphering MiRNA Transcription Factor Feed-Forward Loops to Identify Drug Repurposing Candidates for Cystic Fibrosis.
Liu Z., Borlak J., and Tong W.
Genome Medicine. 2014, 6:94.
 

In Silico Drug Repositioning – What We Need to Know.
Liu Z,, Fang H., Reagan K., Xu X., Mendrick D., Slikker W. Jr., and Tong W.
Drug Discovery Today. 2013,18(3–4): 110–115.
 

Translating Clinical Findings into Knowledge in Drug Safety Evaluation - Drug-Induced Liver Injury Prediction System (DILIps).
Liu Z., Shi Q., Kelly R., Ding D., Fang H., and Tong W.
PLoS Computational Biology. 2011, 7(12): e1002310.
 

Lab Member

Contact information for all lab members:
(870) 543-7121
NCTRResearch@fda.hhs.gov

Brian Delavan
Ph.D. Candidate

Liyuan Zhu
Postdoctoral Fellow

Xiangwen Liu, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow