Cancerwise

Xiling Shen, Ph.D., was an electrical engineering professor when a landmark discovery prompted him to shift the focus of his work and dedicate his lab to precision medicine.

Throughout his life, Shen had felt the pull of medicine. As a high school student in Shanghai, he dreamed of becoming a doctor. But when he was in high school, he lost his uncle to colorectal cancer. Watching his uncle suffer caused Shen to fear that a career as a physician would have too great of an emotional toll.

“I chose to be an electrical engineer, so I only needed to deal with machines,” he says.

He designed electrical circuits for wireless semiconductor chips at both a Silicon Valley startup and more established companies. He also studied optical communication via multimode fibers. But over the years, he began to contemplate understanding complex gene regulatory circuits using analytical methods he developed from electrical circuits. The idea of studying models of cancer circuitry – the intricate networks of signaling pathways, gene expression and molecular processes within cell growth and what went wrong in cancer cells – was compelling.

Then, in 2009, 3D organoids entered oncology and revolutionized the way Shen thought about the potential of cancer research. This new technology allowed researchers to model and manipulate primary patient tissues. This would allow researchers to make precise genomic measurements and then test them in living tissue assays. He decided his lab would now focus on precision medicine. 

Inside the Shen Lab

After a few years, Shen began to develop cutting-edge engineering and data technology to enable innovative clinical trial designs that get the right drug to the right patient faster. He founded several biotechnology companies that are now working on clinical trials. Notably, under his leadership as CEO, one of these companies secured $89 million in Series A financing and was recognized by Business Insider as one of the top 16 life science startups and top 73 overall startups in 2023. He has held leadership roles in national cancer research initiatives, including serving as Steering Committee Chair of the National Cancer Institute Patient-Derived Model of Cancer Consortium, co-chair of the NCI Tissue Engineering Collaborative, and Cancer Track Chair of the Biomedical Engineering Society Meeting. 

In June 2024, Shen brought his lab and his work to MD Anderson as a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) scholar.

“I came to MD Anderson to make more bench-to-bedside impact,” he says. “I was impressed by how forward-thinking MD Anderson’s leadership and clinicians are, and how willing they are to try new ideas to improve patient care. Here, everything is patient-focused.”

Today, Shen is a professor of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology – Research. He runs a lab that is developing innovative technologies and exploring precision medicine through a systems biology approach with an emphasis on cancer, stem cells and the gut-brain axis – that is, the bidirectional communication network between the gastrointestinal tract and the central nervous system.

Serving cancer patients

Now, Shen is helping many patients like his uncle. In addition to killing cancer cells, he has developed a new neuromodulation therapy to treat cachexia, a common cancer comorbidity that impacted his uncle. Cachexia causes significant weight and muscle loss and contributes to one-third of cancer deaths, as there currently is no treatment available for it.

Every up, down and swerve of experience helped bring Shen to where he is today, and he’s using that experience to help patients live longer, healthier lives.

“I came to MD Anderson as a bioengineer because of its unparalleled ability to translate discovery from bench to bedside,” Shen says.  “Access to patient samples and records enabled us to identify the most effective targets, and MD Anderson’s multidisciplinary care teams provided the guidance needed to design this unconventional device trial and launch it here – all to directly benefit cancer patients.”

Learn about research careers at MD Anderson.