U.S. Food and Drug Administration Awards Dr. Rui Zhang $1.5M U01 Grant
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) awarded Professor and Chief in the Division of Computational Health Sciences, Rui Zhang, PhD, FAMCI, FAMIA, FIAHSI, a $1.5M U01 grant for his research on CardioOnco-AI: AI-Empowered Cardiotoxicity Risk Prediction Among Breast Cancer Survivors Using Multi-Site Real-World Data.
This project will deliver a novel, generalizable framework that integrates structured and unstructured real-world data (RWD) to improve cardiotoxicity risk prediction in breast cancer survivors. Additionally, this work directly aligns with the FDA's regulatory science priorities and supports safer post-treatment survivorship care.
"There is a critical need to develop novel AI-powered informatics frameworks to build, maintain, and enhance models that predict cardiovascular risk among breast cancer survivors across diverse health systems. The objective of this project is to develop and validate a scalable, generalizable, and explainable AI-powered informatics framework, CardioOnco-AI, which innovates on the curation and modeling of RWD for the individualized prediction of cardiotoxicity among breast cancer survivors," says Dr. Zhang.
The project's start date is September 22, 2025, and its end date is set for August 31, 2028.
Other co-investigators include fellow University of Minnesota Drs. Anne Blaes, Bhavadharini Ramu, Genevieve Melton-Meaux, Paul Drawz, and Ju Sun (from the Department of Computer Science & Engineering).
The UMN team will collaborate with investigators at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston led by Hongfang Liu to externally validate their approach across health systems across Minnesota and Texas.
Congratulations, Dr. Zhang!
