Sean Lee
Computational Biology & Translational Oncology
Hi, I'm Sean. My work spans gastrointestinal cancers, from biliary tract cancer to multi-omic analysis of the tumor microenvironment, and is based in the Department of GI Medical Oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Working with researchers at MD Anderson and Baylor College of Medicine led to my presenting at the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation Annual Conference, where I'm the youngest and only high schooler to present research. The resulting first-author abstract is published in The Oncologist. Continued collaboration with my MD Anderson professor has me presenting at ESMO Asia in December and returning to the CCF conference next spring, as well as leading a paper with them now under review at Molecular Oncology. Alongside the research, I founded Onco Research Scholars, helping others do the same, and co-founded Sutura Genomics (YC Startup School 2026), where I serve as CTO.
Outside the lab, I shoot photography. You can follow it at @sean.photodiary_.
Updates
- Mar 2027 Presenting at the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation Annual Conference in Utah (Mar 22-25, 2027).
- Dec 2026 Presenting a poster at the ESMO Asia Congress, held at the Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre (Dec 4-6, 2026).
- Jul 2026 Working with interns from Dartmouth, Harvard, Emory, UT Austin, Stanford, and IIT on PhysioCheck, a biomedical AI-safety benchmark testing whether medical LLM outputs obey explicit physical and physiological constraints.
- Jul 2026 Posted a spatial-transcriptomics registration methodology preprint for Sutura Genomics on bioRxiv.
- Jul 2026 Napabucasin Phase 3 meta-analysis (4 trials, 3,383 patients) preregistered on OSF and under review at Clinical Colorectal Cancer.
- Jun 2026 Accepted out of 30,000 applicants to Y Combinator Startup School 2026 (admission ticket).
- Jun 2026 First-author pSTAT3 biliary tract cancer study published in The Oncologist (Oxford University Press).
- Jun 2026 Had a blast volunteering at Texas Children's Hospital (video).
- May 2026 Presented at the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation Annual Conference (May 1-3, 2026), named the youngest presenter in its documented history.
- Apr 2026 Co-founded Sutura Genomics, an AI spatial-biology startup, as CTO; now at 5-figure revenue.
- Apr 2026 Co-founded ThroughWay, a cancer financial-toxicity nonprofit, as CFO.
- Mar 2026 Built the Research Brain, an AI research system layered over a ~1,300-note oncology knowledge base (graph view).
- Jan 2026 Founded Onco Research Scholars, a student research-mentorship organization.
- Jul 2025 Attended the invitation-only DAVANCO oncology symposium in Bermuda.
Research
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A 6-Gene pSTAT3 Transcriptomic Score Identifies an Immunosuppressive, Chemotherapy-Resistant Phenotype and Predicts Poor Survival in Biliary Tract CancerDevelops and validates a six-gene pSTAT3 transcriptomic score in biliary-tract cancer, linking high pathway activity to shorter survival, an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, and chemotherapy resistance. -
Tissue tearing degrades optimal-transport registration of spatial transcriptomics beyond displacement magnitude: a multiseed deformation benchmark and a supervised graph cross-attention proof-of-conceptBuilds a controlled human-DLPFC benchmark showing that tissue tears break optimal-transport, diffeomorphic, and Gaussian-process registration methods; tests a graph cross-attention model and diagnoses donor shift as its main generalization failure.
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Napabucasin Across Four Registrational Phase 3 Trials in Advanced Gastrointestinal Cancers: A Complete-Enumeration Meta-Analysis Bounding the Survival Effect, and a Tested Non-Replication of the pSTAT3 Biomarker SignalPools all four registrational phase 3 trials of napabucasin, covering 3,383 patients, to bound any clinically meaningful survival benefit and test whether the reported pSTAT3-positive biomarker signal replicates. -
A pan-cancer identifiability atlas for compartment-resolved pathway attribution from bulk transcriptomesIntroduces a calibrated four-part identifiability gate for asking whether bulk RNA can recover malignant-versus-stromal pathway differences; across 5,576 TCGA tumors, only 6.9% of pathway-cohort attributions pass.
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Competing risks are ignored in most SEER cancer-specific-mortality nomograms: a systematic audit with real-patient reanalysis and a validated correction pipelineAudits 1,000 SEER nomogram papers and finds that 82.8% show no evidence of competing-risk handling; validates how naive survival methods overestimate cancer-specific mortality and releases a reproducible correction pipeline. -
Most published immunotherapy-response gene signatures do not outperform random gene sets, and collapse onto a single tumor-inflammation axisBenchmarks 102 published immune-checkpoint response signatures across 15 cohorts against size-matched random gene sets, finding that most collapse onto one tumor-inflammation axis with a held-out predictive ceiling near AUROC 0.59. -
Tumor Phospho-STAT3 Marks a Shared Angiogenic-Fibrotic, Immune-Replete Microenvironment Across Gastrointestinal Cancers: A Multi-Omic Analysis of 1,274 TumorsUses genomic, transcriptomic, and spatial data from 1,274 tumors across gastrointestinal cancers to test whether pSTAT3 marks a shared angiogenic-fibrotic, immune-replete microenvironment linked to patient survival.
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When can a pathway program be attributed to a tumour compartment from bulk RNA? An identifiability audit across immune-checkpoint cohortsAudits whether malignant and stromal STAT3 activity can be separated from bulk RNA-seq in six immune-checkpoint cohorts; only two pass the identifiability gate, and compartment resolution adds no predictive value beyond the bulk signal.
Experience
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Sutura Genomics · Co-Founder & CTOAI platform for spatial-biology tissue reconstruction · 5-figure revenue · YC Startup School 2026Apr 2026 - present
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Onco Research Scholars · Founder & PresidentInternational student research incubator · 120+ membersJan 2026 - present
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ThroughWay · Co-Founder & CFONonprofit reducing financial toxicity for cancer patients; working with the MD Anderson Financial Clearance Center's executive directorApr 2026 - present
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UT MD Anderson Cancer Center · Research InternComputational cancer genomics · GI Medical OncologyJan 2024 - present
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Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation · ResearcherStatistical & survival modeling · Salt Lake City, Utah · RemoteJan 2026 - present
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European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) · ResearcherSingapore · RemoteApr 2026 - present
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology · ResearcherResearch internshipJan - Jun 2026
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Baylor College of Medicine · ResearcherResearch internshipJan - Jun 2026