Dr. Ping Mu is an Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Urology and Department of Pathology at Yale School of Medicine and a member of the Yale Cancer Center. His research focuses on lineage plasticity and tumor heterogeneity as central mechanisms by which prostate and bladder cancers develop resistance to targeted and immune therapies. His lab investigates how loss of lineage fidelity, epigenetic reprogramming, and cellular diversification enable tumor cells to escape therapeutic pressure and adopt adaptive, treatment-refractory states. By integrating CRISPR-based Perturb-seq in 3D-cultured organoids with single-cell and spatial transcriptomic profiling of patient specimens, his team dissects the molecular and chromatin regulators that control plastic cell-state transitions and clonal evolution. They also study how tumor heterogeneity extends beyond epithelial compartments to include immune and stromal remodeling within the microenvironment. To enable precision oncology, Dr. Mu’s lab develops AI-driven models that integrate multi-omics data from FFPE tissues and patient-derived organoids to predict molecular subtypes and therapeutic vulnerabilities. His work has been published in Science (2017), Nature Genetics (2015), Cancer Cell (2020, 2023), Nature Cancer (2022), Cancer Discovery (2024), and Oncogene (2024), and his long-term goal is to translate fundamental insights into individualized, mechanism-based treatment strategies that improve patient outcomes.