Ryan Sun, Ph.D.
Department of Biostatistics, Division of VP, Research
About Dr. Ryan Sun
For more information and software downloads, please see Dr. Sun's personal website https://ryanrsun.github.io.
Present Title & Affiliation
Primary Appointment
Assistant Professor, Department of Biostatistics, Division of Basic Science Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
Education & Training
Degree-Granting Education
2017 | Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA, PHD, Biostatistics |
2014 | Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA, MA, Biostatistics |
2012 | Columbia University, New York, NY, USA, BS, Applied Mathematics |
Postgraduate Training
2017-2019 | Research Fellowship, Harvard University, Boston, MA |
Honors & Awards
2018 | New Researchers Conference Travel Award, IMS |
2017 | Postdoctoral Travel Award, Harvard Program in Quantitative Genomics |
2017 | Distinguished Student Paper Award, ENAR |
2015 | Distinction in Teaching Award, Harvard University |
2014 | Distinction in Teaching Award, Harvard University |
2013 | Cyprus Travel Grant, Harvard-Cyprus Program |
2008 | Lauren P. Breakiron Scholar, Columbia University |
Professional Memberships
Selected Publications
Peer-Reviewed Articles
- Sun R, Zhu L, Li Y, Yasui Y, Robison L. Inference for Set-Based Effects in Genetic Association Studies with Interval Censored Outcomes. Biometrics 79(2):1573-1585, 2023. e-Pub 2022. PMID: 35165890.
- Li Y, Xiao X, Li J, Byun J, Cheng C, Bossé Y, McKay J, Albanes D, Lam S, Tardon A, Chen C, Bojesen SE, Landi MT, Johansson M, Risch A, Bickeböller H, Wichmann HE, Christiani DC, Rennert G, Arnold S, Goodman G, Field JK, Davies MPA, Shete SS, Le Marchand L, Melander O, Brunnström H, Liu G, Hung RJ, Andrew AS, Kiemeney LA, Shen H, Sun R, Zienolddiny S, Grankvist K, Johansson M, Caporaso N, Teare DM, Hong YC, Lazarus P, Schabath MB, Aldrich MC, Schwartz AG, Gorlov I, Purrington K, Yang P, Liu Y, Han Y, Bailey-Wilson JE, Pinney SM, Mandal D, Willey JC, Gaba C, Brennan P, Amos CI, INTEGRAL-ILCCO lung cancer consortium. Genome-wide interaction analysis identified low-frequency variants with sex disparity in lung cancer risk. Hum Mol Genet 31(16):2831-2843, 2022. e-Pub 2022. PMID: 35138370.
- Cherng HJ, Sun R, Sugg B, Irwin R, Yang H, Le CC, Deng Q, Fayad L, Fowler NH, Parmar S, Steiner R, Hagemeister F, Nair R, Lee HJ, Rodriguez M, Samaniego F, Iyer SP, Flowers CR, Wang L, Nastoupil LJ, Neelapu SS, Ahmed S, Strati P, Green MR, Westin J. Risk assessment with low-pass whole-genome sequencing of cell-free DNA before CD19 CAR T-cell therapy for large B-cell lymphoma. Blood 140(5):504-515, 2022. PMID: 35512184.
- Huang B*, Sun R*, Claggett B, Tian L, Ludmir EB, Wei LJ. Handling Informative Premature Treatment or Study Discontinuation for Assessing Between-Group Differences in a Comparative Oncology Trial. JAMA Oncol. e-Pub 2022. PMID: 35980612.
- Sun R, Shi A, Lin X. Differences in set-based tests for sparse alternatives when testing sets of outcomes compared to sets of explanatory factors in genetic association studies. Biostatistics. e-Pub 2022. PMID: 36000269.
- Byun J, Han Y, Li Y, Xia J, Long E, Choi J, Xiao X, Zhu M, Zhou W, Sun R, Bossé Y, Song Z, Schwartz A, Lusk C, Rafnar T, Stefansson K, Zhang T, Zhao W, Pettit RW, Liu Y, Li X, Zhou H, Walsh KM, Gorlov I, Gorlova O, Zhu D, Rosenberg SM, Pinney S, Bailey-Wilson JE, Mandal D, de Andrade M, Gaba C, Willey JC, You M, Anderson M, Wiencke JK, Albanes D, Lam S, Tardon A, Chen C, Goodman G, Bojeson S, Brenner H, Landi MT, Chanock SJ, Johansson M, Muley T, Risch A, Wichmann HE, Bickeböller H, Christiani DC, Rennert G, Arnold S, Field JK, Shete S, Le Marchand L, Melander O, Brunnstrom H, Liu G, Andrew AS, Kiemeney LA, Shen H, Zienolddiny S, Grankvist K, Johansson M, Caporaso N, Cox A, Hong YC, Yuan JM, Lazarus P, Schabath MB, Aldrich MC, Patel A, Lan Q, Rothman N, Taylor F, Kachuri L, Witte JS, Sakoda LC, Spitz M, Brennan P, Lin X, McKay J, Hung RJ, Amos CI. Cross-ancestry genome-wide meta-analysis of 61,047 cases and 947,237 controls identifies new susceptibility loci contributing to lung cancer. Nat Genet 54(8):1167-1177, 2022. e-Pub 2022. PMID: 35915169.
- Westin J, Davis RE, Feng L, Hagemeister F, Steiner R, Lee HJ, Fayad L, Nastoupil L, Ahmed S, Rodriguez A, Fanale M, Samaniego F, Iyer SP, Nair R, Oki Y, Fowler N, Wang M, Ma MCJ, Vega F, McDonnell T, Pinnix C, Griffith D, Lu Y, Tewari S, Sun R, Scott DW, Flowers CR, Neelapu S, Green MR. Smart Start: Rituximab, Lenalidomide, and Ibrutinib in Patients With Newly Diagnosed Large B-Cell Lymphoma. J Clin Oncol:JCO2200597. e-Pub 2022. PMID: 35952327.
- Yam C, Abuhadra N, Sun R, Adrada BE, Ding QQ, White JB, Ravenberg EE, Clayborn AR, Valero V, Tripathy D, Damodaran S, Arun BK, Litton JK, Ueno NT, Murthy RK, Lim B, Baez L, Li X, Buzdar AU, Hortobagyi GN, Thompson AM, Mittendorf EA, Rauch GM, Candelaria RP, Huo L, Moulder SL, Chang JT. Molecular Characterization and Prospective Evaluation of Pathologic Response and Outcomes with Neoadjuvant Therapy in Metaplastic Triple-Negative Breast Cancer. Clin Cancer Res 28(13):2878-2889, 2022. PMID: 35507014.
- Li X, Yung G, Zhou H, Sun R, Li Z, Hou K, Zhang MJ, Liu Y, Arapoglou T, Wang C, Ionita-Laza I, Lin X. A multi-dimensional integrative scoring framework for predicting functional variants in the human genome. Am J Hum Genet 109(3):446-456, 2022. e-Pub 2022. PMID: 35216679.
- Abuhadra N, Sun R, Litton JK, Rauch GM, Yam C, Chang JT, Seth S, Bassett R, Lim B, Thompson AM, Mittendorf E, Adrada BE, Damodaran S, White J, Ravenberg E, Candelaria R, Arun B, Ueno NT, Santiago L, Saleem S, Abouharb S, Murthy RK, Ibrahim N, Sahin AA, Valero V, Symmans WF, Tripathy D, Moulder S, Huo L. Prognostic Impact of High Baseline Stromal Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes in the Absence of Pathologic Complete Response in Early-Stage Triple-Negative Breast Cancer. Cancers (Basel) 14(5), 2022. e-Pub 2022. PMID: 35267631.
- Grover P, Veilleux O, Tian L, Sun R, Previtera M, Curran E, Muffly L. Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy in adults with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Blood Adv 6(5):1608-1618, 2022. PMID: 34610109.
- McCaw ZR, Gaynor SM, Sun R, Lin X. Leveraging a surrogate outcome to improve inference on a partially missing target outcome. Biometrics. e-Pub 2022. PMID: 35218565.
- Kaseb AO, Hasanov E, Cao HST, Xiao L, Vauthey JN, Lee SS, Yavuz BG, Mohamed YI, Qayyum A, Jindal S, Duan F, Basu S, Yadav SS, Nicholas C, Sun JJ, Singh Raghav KP, Rashid A, Carter K, Chun YS, Tzeng CD, Sakamuri D, Xu L, Sun R, Cristini V, Beretta L, Yao JC, Wolff RA, Allison JP, Sharma P. Perioperative nivolumab monotherapy versus nivolumab plus ipilimumab in resectable hepatocellular carcinoma: a randomised, open-label, phase 2 trial. Lancet Gastroenterol Hepatol. e-Pub 2022. PMID: 35065057.
- Sun R*, McCaw Z*, Tian L, Uno H, Hong F, Kim DH, Wei LJ. Moving beyond conventional stratified analysis to assess the treatment effect in a comparative oncology study. J Immunother Cancer 9(11), 2021. PMID: 34799398.
- Han G, Yang G, Hao D, Lu Y, Thein K, Simpson BS, Chen J, Sun R, Alhalabi O, Wang R, Dang M, Dai E, Zhang S, Nie F, Zhao S, Guo C, Hamza A, Czerniak B, Cheng C, Siefker-Radtke A, Bhat K, Futreal A, Peng G, Wargo J, Peng W, Kadara H, Ajani J, Swanton C, Litchfield K, Ahnert JR, Gao J, Wang L. 9p21 loss confers a cold tumor immune microenvironment and primary resistance to immune checkpoint therapy. Nat Commun 12(1):5606, 2021. e-Pub 2021. PMID: 34556668.
- Yam C, Yen EY, Chang JT, Bassett RL, Alatrash G, Garber H, Huo L, Yang F, Philips AV, Ding QQ, Lim B, Ueno NT, Kannan K, Sun X, Sun B, Parra Cuentas ER, Symmans WF, White JB, Ravenberg E, Seth S, Guerriero JL, Rauch GM, Damodaran S, Litton JK, Wargo JA, Hortobagyi GN, Futreal A, Wistuba II, Sun R, Moulder SL, Mittendorf EA. Immune Phenotype and Response to Neoadjuvant Therapy in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer. Clin Cancer Res. e-Pub 2021. PMID: 34253579.
- Strati P, Ahmed S, Furqan F, Fayad LE, Lee HJ, Iyer SP, Nair R, Nastoupil LJ, Parmar S, Rodriguez MA, Samaniego F, Steiner RE, Wang M, Pinnix CC, Horowitz SB, Feng L, Sun R, Claussen CM, Hawkins MC, Johnson NA, Singh P, Mistry H, Johncy S, Adkins S, Kebriaei P, Shpall EJ, Green MR, Flowers CR, Westin J, Neelapu SS. Prognostic Impact of Corticosteroids on Efficacy of Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell Therapy in Large B-cell Lymphoma. Blood 137(23):3272-3276, 2021. PMID: 33534891.
- Xu M, Tapia C, Hajjar J, Sabir S, Colen R, Nagarajan P, Aung P, Gong J, Rodon J, Fu S, Stephen B, Roy-Chowdhuri S, Le H, Yang V, Zarifa A, Abdelsalam ME, Jhingran A, Javle M, Pant S, Carter B, Milton DR, Sun R, Karp DD, Koay EJ, Yang Y, Wistuba II,Hwu P, Meric-Bernstam F, Naing A. Implementation of a novel web-based lesion selection tool to improve acquisition of tumor biopsy specimens. Journal of Immunotherapy and Precision Oncology, 2021.
- Sun R, Xu M, Li X, Gaynor S, Zhou H, Li Z, Bossé Y, Lam S, Tsao MS, Tardon A, Chen C, Doherty J, Goodman G, Bojesen SE, Landi MT, Johansson M, Field JK, Bickeböller H, Wichmann HE, Risch A, Rennert G, Arnold S, Wu X, Melander O, Brunnström H, Le Marchand L, Liu G, Andrew A, Duell E, Kiemeney LA, Shen H, Haugen A, Johansson M, Grankvist K, Caporaso N, Woll P, Dawn Teare M, Scelo G, Hong YC, Yuan JM, Lazarus P, Schabath MB, Aldrich MC, Albanes D, Mak R, Barbie D, Brennan P, Hung RJ, Amos CI, Christiani DC, Lin X. Integration of multiomic annotation data to prioritize and characterize inflammation and immune-related risk variants in squamous cell lung cancer. Genet Epidemiol 45(1):99-114, 2021. e-Pub 2020. PMID: 32924180.
- Alhalabi O, Soomro Z, Sun R, Hasanov E, Albittar A, Tripathy D, Valero V, Ibrahim N. Outcomes of changing systemic therapy in patients with relapsed breast cancer and 1 to 3 brain metastases. NPJ Breast Cancer 7(1), 2021.
- Kim DH, Li X, Bian S, Wei LJ, Sun R. Utility of Restricted Mean Survival Time for Analyzing Time to Nursing Home Placement Among Patients With Dementia. JAMA Netw Open 4(1):e2034745, 2021. e-Pub 2021. PMID: 33507253.
- Sun R, Wang Z, Claus Henn B, Su L, Lu Q, Lin X, Wright RO, Bellinger DC, Kile M, Mazumdar M, Tellez-Rojo MM, Schnaas L, Christiani DC. Identification of novel loci associated with infant cognitive ability. Mol Psychiatry 25(11):3010-3019, 2020. e-Pub 2018. PMID: 30120420.
- Colina A, Hwang H, Wang H, Katz MHG, Sun R, Lee JE, Thomas J, Tzeng CW, Wolff RA, Raghav K, Overman MJ. Natural history and prognostic factors for localised small bowel adenocarcinoma. ESMO Open 5(6), 2020. PMID: 33188051.
- Deng Q, Han G, Puebla-Osorio N, Chun M, Ma J, Strati P, Chasen B, Dai E, Dang M, Jain N, Yang H, Wang Y, Zhang S, Wang R, Chen R, Showell J, Ghosh S, Patchva S, Zhang Q, Sun R, Hagemeister F, Fayad L, Samaniego F, Lee HC, Nastoupil LJ, Fowler N, David RE, Westin J, Neelapu SS, Wang L, Green MR. Characteristics of anti-CD19 CAR T cell infusion products associated with efficacy and toxicity in patients with large B cell lymphomas. Nature Medicine, 2020.
- Li X, Li Z, Zhou H, Gaynor SM, Liu Y, Chen H, Sun R, Dey R, Arnett DK, Aslibekyan S, Ballantyne CM, Bielak LF, Blangero J, Boerwinkle E, Bowden DW, Broome JG, Conomos MP, Correa A, Cupples LA, Curran JE, Freedman BI, Guo X, Hindy G, Irvin MR, Kardia SLR, Kathiresan S, Khan AT, Kooperberg CL, Laurie CC, Liu XS, Mahaney MC, Manichaikul AW, Martin LW, Mathias RA, McGarvey ST, Mitchell BD, Montasser ME, Moore JE, Morrison AC, O'Connell JR, Palmer ND, Pampana A, Peralta JM, Peyser PA, Psaty BM, Redline S, Rice KM, Rich SS, Smith JA, Tiwari HK, Tsai MY, Vasan RS, Wang FF, Weeks DE, Weng Z, Wilson JG, Yanek LR, NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Consortium, TOPMed Lipids Working Group, Neale BM, Sunyaev SR, Abecasis GR, Rotter JI, Willer CJ, Peloso GM, Natarajan P, Lin X. Dynamic incorporation of multiple in silico functional annotations empowers rare variant association analysis of large whole-genome sequencing studies at scale. Nat Genet 52(9):969-983, 2020. e-Pub 2020. PMID: 32839606.
- Yam C, Rauch GM, Rahman T, Karuturi M, Ravenberg E, White J, Clayborn A, McCarthy P, Abouharb S, Lim B, Litton JK, Ramirez DL, Saleem S, Stec J, Symmans WF, Huo L, Damodaran S, Sun R, Moulder SL. A phase II study of Mirvetuximab Soravtansine in triple-negative breast cancer. Invest New Drugs. e-Pub 2020. PMID: 32984932.
- Zhu L, Tong X, Cai D, Li Y, Sun R, Srivastava DK, Hudson MM. Maximum likelihood estimation for the proportional odds model with mixed interval-censored failure time data. Journal of Applied Statistics, 2020.
- Park HR, Sun R, Panganiban R, Christiani DC, Lu Q. MicroRNA-124 Reduces Arsenic-induced Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress and Neurotoxicity and is Linked with Neurodevelopment in Children. Scientific Reports, 2020.
- Sun R, Lin X. Genetic Variant Set-Based Tests Using the Generalized Berk-Jones Statistic with Application to a Genome-Wide Association Study of Breast Cancer. J Am Stat Assoc 115(531):1079-1091, 2020. e-Pub 2019. PMID: 33041403.
- Gaynor SM*, Sun R*, Lin X, Quackenbush J. Identification of differentially expressed gene sets using the Generalized Berk-Jones statistica. Bioinformatics 35(22):4568-4576, 2019. e-Pub 2019. PMID: 31062858.
- Sun R, Hui S, Bader GD, Lin X, Kraft P. Powerful gene set analysis in GWAS with the Generalized Berk-Jones statistic. PLoS Genet 15(3):e1007530, 2019. e-Pub 2019. PMID: 30875371.
- Orkaby AR, Rich MW, Sun R, Lux E, Wei LJ, Kim DH. Pravastatin for Primary Prevention in Older Adults: Restricted Mean Survival Time Analysis. J Am Geriatr Soc 66(10):1987-1991, 2018. e-Pub 2018. PMID: 30251369.
- Sun R, Carroll RJ, Christiani DC, Lin X. Testing for gene-environment interaction under exposure misspecification. Biometrics 74(2):653-662, 2018. e-Pub 2017. PMID: 29120492.
- Wang Z, Claus Henn B, Wang C, Wei Y, Su L, Sun R, Chen H, Wagner PJ, Lu Q, Lin X, Wright R, Bellinger D, Kile M, Mazumdar M, Tellez-Rojo MM, Schnaas L, Christiani DC. Genome-wide gene by lead exposure interaction analysis identifies UNC5D as a candidate gene for neurodevelopment. Environ Health 16(1):81, 2017. e-Pub 2017. PMID: 28754176.
- Sun R*, Bouchard MB*, Hillman EM. SPLASSH: Open source software for camera-based high-speed, multispectral in-vivo optical image acquisition. Biomed Opt Express 1(2):385-397, 2010. e-Pub 2010. PMID: 21258475.
Letters to the Editor
- Sun R, Tian L, Wei LJ. Evaluating Long-term Efficacy of Neoadjuvant Chemoradiotherapy Plus Surgery for the Treatment of Locally Advanced Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma. JAMA Surg 157: 458-459, 2022.
- Sun R, Messick C, Wei LJ. Two-Stage Turnbull-Cutait Pull-Through Coloanal Anastomosis for Low Rectal Cancers. JAMA Surg 156: 202-203.
- Sun R, Kim DH, Wei LJ. Analysis of Overall Survival Benefit of Abemaciclib Plus Fulvestrant in Hormone Receptor-Positive, ERBB2-Negative Breast Cancer. JAMA Oncol 6: 1121-1122, 2020.
- Wei LJ, Sun R, Orkaby AR, Kim DH, Zhu H. Biodegradable-polymer stents versus durable-polymer stents. Lancet 393: 1932-1933, 2019.
- Sun R, Zhu H, Wei LJ. Assessing the Prognostic Value of the Automated Bone Scan Index for Prostate Cancer. JAMA Oncol 5: 270, 2019.
- Sun R, Lee H, Wei LJ. Interpreting the Long-term Prognostic Value of Total Mesorectal Excision Plane Quality in Rectal Adenocarcinoma. JAMA Surg 154: 96, 2019.
- Sun R, Wei LJ. Regional Hyperthermia With Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy for Treatment of Soft Tissue Sarcoma. JAMA Oncol 5: 112-113, 2019.
- Sun R, Nie L, Huang B, Kim DH, Wei LJ. Quantifying Immunoscore performance. Lancet 392: 1624, 2018.
- Sun R, Rich MW, Wei LJ. Pembrolizumab plus Chemotherapy in Lung Cancer. N Engl J Med 379: e18, 2018.
- Sun R, Horiguchi M, Wei LJ. Interpreting the Benefit of Trifluridine/Tipiracil in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer With Respect to Progression-Free Survival and Overall Survival. J Clin Oncol 36: 1378-1379, 2018.
Grant & Contract Support
Title: | Cancer Center Support Grant - Biostatistics Resource Group (BRG) |
Funding Source: | NIH/NCI |
Role: | Biostatistician |
Title: | MD Anderson Oropharynx Program - Biostatistics and Data Integration |
Funding Source: | Stiefel Research Fund |
Role: | Biostatistician |
Title: | Targeting aggressive NK-cell leukemia and other CD94-expressing NK/T-cell lymphoproliferative disorders with CAR T-cell therapy |
Funding Source: | Conquer Cancer Foundation |
Role: | Co-Investigator |
Title: | Innovative Statistical Analysis for Genome-Wide Data with General Interval-Censored Outcomes of Oral Health in Childhood Cancer Survivors |
Funding Source: | NIH/NIDCR |
Role: | Principal Investigator |
Title: | MIRA Project 4 - Overcoming PARP inhibitor resistance in patients with breast cancer who have germline BRCA mutations |
Funding Source: | Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) |
Role: | Co-Investigator |