Affiliation

Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Precision Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS

Director, Precision Medicine Translational Research Programme, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS

Principal Investigator, Cancer Science Institute of Singapore, NUS

Founder and Chairman, Provaxus Inc

Education

Honours & Awards

Research Interest

The White lab works in the fields of functional genomics and systems biology, using large-scale biological data-sets to generate biological insights and create new directions in diagnostic and therapeutic development to treat cancer and other disorders. Currently, focusing on developing new approaches for accelerating precision medicine through the development of nucleic acid based therapeutics and cellular engineering.

Research

Prof. White has worked at the interface of technology development and application to biological problems for over 20 years. The teams that he leads are committed to using genomic and computation/analytics tools, and an iterative experimental systems biology approach, to distill explanatory or predictive models from the complexity of multi-genic and epigenetic processes that underlie development, evolution and disease. Over the years Prof White’s laboratory has developed and used experimental and computational genomics and systems biology toolkits to delineate the basic architecture of transcriptional genomic systems in the development of model systems, to uncover basic principles of gene regulatory evolution in model organisms and humans, to identify conserved oncogenes and tumor suppressors, and to shed light on the transcriptional networks that go awry in cancers and discover novel drug targets in those same cancers as a result. Prof White’s lab has also contributed significantly to the mapping and functional characterization of the human genome in general through the NIH Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, and to mapping the genomic architecture of the human brain in neuropsychiatric disorders through the NIH PsychENCODE project, including the systematic identification and characterization of non-coding regions of the human genome predicted to be enhancers that contribute to the development of neuropsychiatric diseases. In the last few years Prof. White’s team has also developed tools and systems for managing and mining massive genomic datasets. They have thus discovered and characterized in model cell systems dozens of novel recurrent fusion genes in human cancers, identified previously unrecognized risk factors for human diseases including cancers, and they have developed predictive algorithms that match specific cancer patients to specific treatments. Prof White is also actively engaged in commercialization of genomic and systems biology approaches for developing novel diagnostics and therapeutics.  He has had founder and executive roles at companies such as Tempus Labs, HealthSeq Asia, and Provaxus.

Selected Publications

1. Analysis of Drosophila Segmentation Network Identifies a JNK Pathway Factor Overexpressed in Kidney Cancer. Liu J, Ghanim M, Xue L, Brown CD, Iossifov I, Angeletti C, Hua S, Nègre N, Ludwig M, Stricker T, Al-Ahmadie HA, Tretiakova M, Camp RL, Perera-Alberto M, Rimm DL, Xu T, Rzhetsky A, White KP.  Science, 323:1218-22, 2009. PMC2756524.
2. Genomic Antagonism between Retinoic Acid and Estrogen Signaling in Breast Cancer. Hua SJ, Kittler R, and White KP. Cell. 137:1259-71, 2009.
3. A cis-regulatory map for the Drosophila genome. Nègre N*, Brown CD*, Ma L*, Bristow CA*, Miller S*, Kheradpour P, Loriaux P, Sealfon R, Li Z, Ishii H, Spokony R, Chen J, Hwang L, Wagner U, Auburn R, Shah PK, Morrison CA, Zieba J, Suchy S, Senderowicz L, Bild NA, Grundstad AJ, Hanley D, Mannervik M, Venken K, Bellen H, White R, Russell S, Grossman RL, Ren B, Posakony JW, Kellis M, White KP.  Mar 24; 471:527-31. 2011.
4. An integrated encyclopedia of DNA elements in the human genome. ENCODE Project Consortium. Nature. 489:57-74. 2012. PMC3439153.
5. A comprehensive nuclear receptor network for breast cancer cells. Kittler R, Zhou J, Hua S, Ma L, Liu Y, Pendleton E, Cheng C, Gerstein M, White KP. Cell Rep. 3:538-51. 2013.
6. Comprehensive functional genomic resource and integrative model for the human brain. Wang D, Liu S, Warrell J, Won H, Shi X, Navarro FCP, Clarke D, Gu M, Emani P, Yang YT, Xu M, Gandal MJ, Lou S, Zhang J, Park JJ, Yan C, Rhie SK, Manakongtreecheep K, Zhou H, Nathan A, Peters M, Mattei E, Fitzgerald D, Brunetti T, Moore J, Jiang Y, Girdhar K, Hoffman GE, Kalayci S, Gümüş ZH, Crawford GE; PsychENCODE Consortium, Roussos P, Akbarian S, Jaffe AE, White KP, Weng Z, Sestan N, Geschwind DH, Knowles JA, Gerstein MB. Science. 2018 Dec 14;362(6420).
7. Clinical validation of the Tempus xT next-generation targeted oncology sequencing assay. Beaubier N, Tell R, Lau D, Parsons JR, Bush S, Perera J, Sorrells S, Baker T, Chang A, Michuda J, Iguartua C, MacNeil S, Shah K, Ellis P, Yeatts K, Mahon B, Taxter T, Bontrager M, Khan A, Huether R, Lefkofsky E, White KP. Oncotarget. 2019 Mar 22;10(24):2384-2396
8. Integrated Genomic Profiling Expands Options for Cancer Patients. Nike Beaubier*, Martin Bontrager*, Robert Huether*, Catherine Igartua*, Denise Lau*, Kaanan P. Shah*, Timothy Taxter*, Robert Tell*, Alexandria M. Bobe, Stephen Bush, Alan L. Chang, Derick C. Hoskinson, Aly A. Khan, Emily Kudalkar, Benjamin D. Leibowitz, Ariane Lozachmeur, Jackson Michuda, Jerod Parsons, Jason F. Perera, Ameen Salahudeen, Wei Zhu, and Kevin P. White. Nature Biotech. 2019 Nov;37(11):1351-1360.
9. Expanded encyclopaedias of DNA elements in the human and mouse genomes. ENCODE Project Consortium. Nature. 2020 Jul;583(7818):699-710.
10. An integrative ENCODE resource for cancer genomics. Zhang J, Lee D, Dhiman V, Jiang P, Xu J, McGillivray P, Yang H, Liu J, Meyerson W, Clarke D, Gu M, Li S, Lou S, Xu J, Lochovsky L, Ung M, Ma L, Yu S, Cao Q, Harmanci A, Yan KK, Sethi A, Gürsoy G, Schoenberg MR, Rozowsky J, Warrell J, Emani P, Yang YT, Galeev T, Kong X, Liu S, Li X, Krishnan J, Feng Y, Rivera-Mulia JC, Adrian J, Broach JR, Bolt M, Moran J, Fitzgerald D, Dileep V, Liu T, Mei S, Sasaki T, Trevilla-Garcia C, Wang S, Wang Y, Zang C, Wang D, Klein RJ, Snyder M, Gilbert DM, Yip K, Cheng C, Yue F, Liu XS, White KP, Gerstein M. Nat Commun. 2020 Jul 29;11(1):3696.