Xin Lai

I am a tenure-track assistant professor at Tampere University. I received my Ph.D. in Systems Biology from the University of Rostock in 2013. After that, I became a research fellow and worked at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg until 2023. My research uses methods from biomathematics and bioinformatics to analyze biological data. My interests broadened to human genomics, network biology and computational modeling through lecturing and tutoring engineering and medical students from primary research papers. More than 10 years of collaboration with experimental researchers led me to realize the importance of a systematic and integrative view of biomedical research. As a PI, I lead the Systems and Network Medicine Lab and use this perspective to conduct research in medical systems biology.

• Zhang Q., Liu F., Lai, X. HallmarkGraph: a cancer hallmark informed graph neural network for classifying hierarchical tumor subtypes. Bioinformatics. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btaf444.
• Lai, X., Luan, C., Zhang, Z., Wessely, A., Heppt, M. V., Berking, C. & Vera, J. SOX10, MITF, and microRNAs: decoding their interplay in regulating melanoma plasticity. International Journal of Cancer. 2025; 157, 1277-1293. News report by e:Med
• Zhang L, Fan SW, Vera J, Lai X. A network medicine approach for identifying diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers and exploring drug repurposing in human cancer. Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal. 2022; 21:34-45.
• You YJ, Lai X, Pan Y, Zheng HR, Vera J, Liu SR, Deng SY, Zhang L. Artificial intelligence in cancer target identification and drug discovery. Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy. 2022; 7:156. Highly cited paper (top 1%) in Web of Science.
• Lai X, Keller C, Santos G, Schaft N, Dörrie J, Vera J. Multi-level computational modeling of anti-cancer dendritic cell vaccination utilized to select molecular targets for therapy optimization. Frontiers in Cell and Development Biology. 2022; 9:746359. News report by e:Med
• Lai X, Zhou JF, Wessely A, Heppt M, Maier A, Berking C, Vera J, Zhang L. A disease network-based deep learning approach for characterizing melanoma. International Journal of Cancer. 2022; 150(6): 1029- 1044. News report by the Bavarian Cancer Research Center