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Stanley Wai-Kwong Ng

Stanley Wai-Kwong Ng

Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Chemistry, School of Medicine, University of California, Irvine

Biography

Stanley Wai-Kwong Ng, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Chemistry at the School of Medicine, University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on investigating the epigenetic, genetic, and transcriptional diversity of clones in normal aging, precancerous, and cancerous tissues, with emphasis on developing precision diagnostic and therapeutic strategies through the integration of spatial and temporal multi-omics data. Ng received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto, where he characterized leukemia stem cells in acute myeloid leukemia, and completed postdoctoral training at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the Cancer, Ageing, and Somatic Mutations Programme.

During his doctoral work, Ng developed the LSC17 stemness score, a 17-gene expression signature for risk stratification in acute myeloid leukemia that was published in Nature in 2016. This work led to an international patent and the implementation of the LSC17 assay as a clinical diagnostic test at multiple treatment centers, where Ng served as technical lead. His postdoctoral research at the Sanger Institute, published in Nature in 2021, identified convergent somatic mutations in metabolism genes across chronic liver disease tissues, work that resulted in another international patent application and contributed to the founding of a biotechnology company focused on developing genomics platforms and therapeutics.

Ng has received funding from the American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant and multiple pilot project grants to support his work on spatial multi-omic profiling in cancer. He is a member of the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and serves as faculty mentor for the Computational Biology Training in Hematology program jointly run by the European Hematology Association and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. His work has been recognized with awards including the Canadian Hematology Society Paper of the Year Award, the American Society of Hematology Abstract Achievement Award, and an EMBO Long-Term Fellowship.

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Education

  • Ph.D., University of Toronto, 2018
  • M.A.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University, 2011
  • M.E.E.I. in Engineering Entrepreneurship & Innovation, McMaster University
  • B.Eng. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University, 2004
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Distinctions

  • EMBO Long-Term Fellowship, 2020
  • American Society of Hematology Abstract Achievement Award, 2017-2018
  • Till & McCulloch Paper of the Year: Translational, 2017
  • Canadian Hematology Society Paper of the Year Award, 2017
  • Till & McCulloch Meetings Best Under the Microscope Oral Presentation Award, 2015
  • Dr. Armand Keating Paper of the Year Award First Place, 2017
  • Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS), 2015
  • International Academy Research and Industry Association Best Paper Award, 2011
  • Mimi and Charles Hollenberg Research Award, 1st place in Category 3: Mechanistic Studies, 2016
  • Jennifer Dorrington Graduate Research Award, 2017
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Areas of Expertise

  • Clonal Evolution in Tissues
  • Leukemia Stem Cell Biomarkers
  • Somatic Mutation Detection
  • Gene Regulatory Network Inference
  • Spatial Transcriptomics Analysis
  • Hepatocellular Carcinoma Pathogenesis
  • Single-Cell Multi-Omics Integration

Recent Publications

  • Murphy T, Zhang B, Zhang T, King I, Capo-Chichi J, Gupta V, Maze D, McNamara CJ, Minden MD, Schimmer AD, Schuh AC, Sibai H, Yee KWL, Arruda A, Lu Z, Khalaf D, Rockwell C, Leber B, Sabloff M, Tierens A, et al., “Real-world validation study of the LSC17 score for risk prediction in patients with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia”, Haematologica, 2025.
  • Chapman MS, Mitchell E, Yoshida K, Williams N, Fabre MA, Ranzoni AM, Robinson PS, Kregar LD, Wilk M, Boettcher S, Mahbubani K, Parsy KS, Gowers KHC, Janes SM, Ng SWK, Hoare M, Green AR, Vassiliou GS, Cvejic A, Manz MG, et al., “Prolonged persistence of mutagenic DNA lesions in somatic cells”, Nature, pp. 729-738, 2025.
  • Stanley W.K. Ng, “Characterization of relapse-supportive monocytic cells in acute myeloid leukemia”, Cell Reports Medicine, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 101507, 2024.
  • Steven Balog, Reika Fujiwara, Stephanie Q Pan, Khairat B El-Baradie, Hye Yeon Choi, Sonal Sinha, Qihong Yang, Kinji Asahina, Yibu Chen, Meng Li, Matthew Salomon, Stanley W.K. Ng, Hidekazu Tsukamoto, “Emergence of highly profibrotic and proinflammatory Lrat+Fbln2+ hepatic stellate cell subpopulation in alcoholic hepatitis” (opens in new tab), Hepatology, vol. 78, pp. 1-13, 2023.
  • Gabriella Assante, Sriram Chandrasekaran, Stanley Ng, Aikaterini Tourna, Carolina H. Chung, Kowsar A. Isse, Celine Filippi, Anil Dhawan, Mo Liu, Steven G. Rozen, Hoare M, Peter Campbell, J. William. O. Ballard, Nigel Turner, Margaret J. Morris, Shilpa Chokshi, Neil A Youngson, “Acetyl-CoA metabolism drives epigenome change and carcinogenesis risk in fatty liver disease”, Genome Medicine, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 67-83, 2022.
  • Dennis DH Kim, Igor Novitzky Basso, Taehyung Simon Kim, Seong Yoon Yi, Kyoung Ha Kim, Tracy Murphy, Steven Chan, Mark Minden, Ivan Pasic, Wilson Lam, Arjun Law, Fotios V. Michelis, Armin Gerbitz, Auro Viswabandya, Jeffrey Lipton, Rajat Kumar, Stanley W.K. Ng, Tracy Stockley, Tong Zhang, Ian King, et al., “The 17-gene stemness score associates with relapse risk and long-term outcomes following allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation in acute myeloid leukemia”, European Journal of Haematology, 2022.
  • Stanley W. K. Ng, Tracy Murphy, Ian King, Tong Zhang, Michelle Mah, Zhibin Lu, Natalie Stickle, Narmin Ibrahimova, Andrea Arruda, Amanda Mitchell, Ming Mai, Rong He, Bindu Swapna Madala, David S. Viswanatha, John E. Dick, Steven Chan, Carl Virtanen, Mark D. Minden, Timothy Mercer, Tracy Stockley, et al., “A clinical laboratory-developed LSC17 stemness score assay for the rapid identification of high-risk acute myeloid leukemia patients”, Blood Advances, 2021.
  • Stanley W. K. Ng, Foad J. Rouhani, Simon F. Brunner, Natalia Brzozowska, Sarah J. Aitken, Ming Yang, Federico Abascal, Luiza Moore, Efterpi Nikitopoulou, Lia Chappell, Daniel Leongamornlert, Aleksandra Ivovic, Philip Robinson, Timothy Butler, Mathijs A. Sanders, Nicholas Williams, Tim H. H. Coorens, Jon Teague, Keiran Raine, Adam P. Butler, et al., “Convergent somatic mutations in metabolism genes in chronic liver disease”, Nature, 2021.
  • Christine Surka, Liqing Jin, Nathan Mbong, Chin-Chun Lu, In Sock Jang, Emily Rychak, Derek Mendy, Thomas Clayton, Elizabeth Tindall, Christy Hsu, Celia Fontanillo, Eileen Tran, Adrian Contreras, Stanley W. K. Ng, Mary Matyskiela, Kai Wang, Philip Chamberlain, Brian Cathers, James Carmichael, Joshua Hansen, et al., “CC-90009, a novel cereblon E3 ligase modulator, targets acute myeloid leukemia blasts and leukemia stem cells”, Blood, vol. 137, pp. 661-677, 2021.
  • Sagi Abelson, Andy G.X. Zeng, Stanley W.K. Ng, Ting Ting Wang, Mark D. Minden, Trevor J. Pugh, Liran I. Shlush, Tracy Murphy, Steven M. Chan, John E. Dick, Scott V. Bratman, “Integration of intra-sample contextual error modeling for improved detection of somatic mutations from deep sequencing”, Science Advances, vol. 6, no. 50, pp. 1-15, 2020.
  • Stephanie Z. Xie, Kerstin B. Kaufmann, Weijia Wang, Michelle Chan-Seng-Yue, Olga I. Gan, Elisa Laurenti, Laura Garcia-Prat, Shin-ichiro Takayanagi, Stanley W.K. Ng, ChangJiang Xu, Andy G. X. Zeng, Liqing Jin, Jessica McLeod, Amanda Mitchell, James A. Kennedy, Qiang Liu, Héléna Boutzen, Melissa Kleinau, Joseph Jargstorf, Gareth Holmes, et al., “Sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor 3 potentiates inflammatory programs in normal and leukemia stem cells to promote differentiation”, Blood Cancer Discovery, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 32-53, 2020.
  • Kerstin B. Kaufmann, Laura Garcia-Prat, Qiang Liu, Stanley W. K. Ng, Shin-Ichiro Takayanagi, Amanda Mitchell, Erno Wienholds, Peter van Galen, Christian A. Cumbaa, Mike J. Tsay, Chiara Pastrello, Elvin Wagenblast, Gabriela Krivdova, Mark D. Minden, Eric R. Lechman, Sasan Zandi, Igor Jurisica, Jean C. Y. Wang, Stephanie Z. Xie, John E. Dick, “A stemness screen reveals C3orf54/INKA1 as a promoter of human leukemia stem cell latency”, Blood, vol. 133, no. 20, pp. 2198-2211, 2019.
  • Nicolas Duployez, Alice Marceau-Renaut, Céline Villenet, Arnaud Petit, Alexandra Rousseau, Stanley WK Ng, Agnès Paquet, Fanny Gonzales, Adeline Barthélémy, Frédéric Leprêtre, Nicolas Pottier, Brigitte Nelken, Gérard Michel, André Baruchel, Yves Bertrand, Guy Leverger, Hélène Lapillonne, Martin Figeac, John E Dick, Jean CY Wang, et al., “The stem cell-associated gene expression signature allows risk stratification in pediatric acute myeloid leukemia”, Leukemia, vol. 33, pp. 348-357, 2019.
  • Sagi Abelson, Grace Collord, Stanley W.K. Ng, Omer Weissbrod, Netta Mendelson Cohen, Elisabeth Niemeyer, Noam Barda, Philip C. Zuzarte, Lawrence Heisler, Yogi Sundaravadanam, Robert Luben, Shabina Hayat, Ting Ting Wang, Zhen Zhao, Iulia Cirlan, Trevor J. Pugh, David Soave, Karen Ng, Calli Latimer, Claire Hardy, et al., “Prediction of AML development in healthy individuals”, Nature, vol. 559, pp. 400-404, 2018.
  • Peter van Galen, Nathan Mbong, Antonia Kreso, Erwin M. Schoof, Elvin Wagenblast, Stanley W.K. Ng, Gabriela Krivdova, Liqing Jin, Hiromitsu Nakauchi, John E. Dick, “Integrated Stress Response Activity Marks Stem Cells in Normal Hematopoiesis and Leukemia”, Cell Reports, vol. 25, no. 5, pp. 1109-1117, 2018.
  • Isabelle Laverdière, Meaghan Boileau, Andrea Neumann, Héloïse Frison, Amanda Mitchell, Stanley Ng, Jean Wang, Mark D. Minden, Kolja Eppert, “Leukemic Stem Cell Signatures Identify Novel Therapeutics Against Acute Myeloid Leukemia”, Blood Cancer Journal, vol. 8, pp. 1-16, 2018.
  • Carsten Bahr, Lisa von Paleske, Veli V. Uslu, Silvia Remeseiro, Naoya Takayama, Stanley W. Ng, Alex Murison, Katja Langenfeld, Massimo Petretich, Roberta Scognamiglio, Petra Zeisberger, Amelie S. Benk, Ido Amit, Peter W. Zandstra, Mathieu Lupien, John E. Dick, Andreas Trumpp, François Spitz, “A Myc enhancer cluster regulates normal and leukaemic haematopoietic stem cell hierarchies”, Nature, vol. 553, pp. 515-520, 2018.
  • Liran I. Shlush, Amanda Mitchell, Lawrence Heisler, Sagi Abelson, Stanley W.K. Ng, Aaron Trotman-Grant, Gary Bader, Veronique Voisin, ChangJiang Xu, Jessie Medeiros, Abilasha Rao, Ivana Jaciw-Zurakowsky, Rene Marke, Jessica L. McLeod, Monica Doedens, John D. McPherson, Thomas J. Hudson, Jean C. Y. Wang, Mark D. Minden, John E. Dick, “Tracing the origins of relapse in acute myeloid leukaemia to stem cells”, Nature, vol. 547, pp. 104-108, 2017.
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Contact Information

Email: stanlewn@uci.edu

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Last updated on 4/9/2026.