Dr. Tsai is a rigorously trained physician-scientist focused on basic and translational research, with a career goal of addressing significant unmet needs in the treatment of patients with advanced-stage cancer. Dr. Tsai graduated with an M.D. from Taipei Medical College (Taiwan) in 1993 and completed his clinical training in internal medicine and gastroenterology (GI). Dr. Tsai earned his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences - Genetics and Complex Diseases from the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, USA) in 2005. During his thesis work, Dr. Tsai established novel organoid co-culture models to interrogate stress-induced stromal-epithelial interactions. He then joined Prof. Valerie M. Weaver’s group at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA, USA) and the University of California, San Francisco (USCF; San Francisco, CA, USA) as a postdoctoral fellow from 2005 to 2007, studying tissue-architecture-related mechanisms of de novo death resistance in cancer using organoid models. Following his postdoctoral research, Dr. Tsai joined the National Institute of Cancer Research at the National Health Research Institutes (NHRIs) in Taiwan as an Investigator and GI oncologist. He then rose to a Professor at the Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences and the Director of the Graduate Institute of Clinical Medicine at Taipei Medical University (TMU) in Taiwan. Dr. Tsai is the recipient of several international awards, including the Harvard Presidential Scholar (USA), Outstanding Research Award, Ministry of Science and Technology (Taiwan), Kobayashi’s Foundation Award, Kobayashi Foundation for Cancer Research (Japan), and the Young Scientists Research Achievement Award, National Health Research Institutes (Taiwan). He is the first or corresponding author of more than 50 research papers published in leading biomedical journals, including 8 in top-notch (IF > 20) journals, such as Gastroenterology (IF 29.7), Nature Cancer (IF 28.0), Gut (IF 24.6), and Cancer Research (IF 22.6). He has also served as the PI or a co-PI in several GI cancer-related clinical trials. Dr. Tsai founded and led the Laboratory of Advanced Molecular Therapeutics (AMT Lab), which focuses on identifying fundamental mechanisms and targets that drive cancer aggressiveness and treatment resistance. Recently, in light of the revolutionary role of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) in biomedical research and drug development, Dr. Tsai led the institutional effort to establish the TMU Core Laboratory of Organoid Technology (TCLOT) to enhance the translatability and clinical relevance of his and other groups’ research. Dr. Tsai’s major scientific achievements include identifying several “Oncogenic Hubs” that regulate multiple developmental and stemness pathways driving cancer progression and metastasis, leading to the development of first-in-class oncogenic-hub-targeted RNA interference (RNAi) therapies for solid tumors. Dr. Tsai also co-identified a chromatin-mediated cellular "Death Checkpoint" whereby most malignant tumors resist cytotoxic stress; targeting this pathway offers an exciting opportunity to sensitize malignant tumors to chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Dr. Tsai is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) and is an elected member of Sigma Xi.

Cancer invasiveness, metastasis, and treatment resistance are the leading causes of patient mortality. Notwithstanding many decades of basic and clinical research, the therapeutic outcome of patients with advanced-stage and metastatic cancers remains far from satisfactory. The AMT Lab uses integrative approaches that combine state-of-the-art patient-derived organoid models (PDOs), proteomics, single-cell genomics, in-depth molecular and biochemical dissection, and clinical correlative analyses to investigate pivotal and targetable mechanisms underlying cancer progression and treatment resistance, as well as their therapeutic applicability. The work at the AMT Lab on these themes has successfully identified key regulatory mechanisms of cancer stemness, invasiveness, and treatment resistance, providing new avenues for developing breakthrough anti-cancer therapies, especially for advanced-stage and resistant cancers.