SDK Lab

Welcome

We are a computational biology lab at the National Cancer Center (NCC), Korea, dedicated to understanding the fundamental principles of cancer through the lens of systems biology and network dynamics.

Cancer may appear to develop gradually, but mounting evidence suggests that the decisive shift from a precancerous to a malignant state can occur as an abrupt, critical transition — a tipping point beyond which the process becomes difficult to reverse. Our lab develops mathematical and computational frameworks to decode the dynamics of these cancer cell state transitions, to pinpoint where the tipping points lie, and to identify critical molecular switches that control cell fate decisions in tumorigenesis.

By integrating gene regulatory network modeling, attractor landscape analysis, single-cell multi-omics, and AI-driven approaches, we aim to transform our understanding of cancer from static snapshots into dynamic maps that can guide precision intervention.

What We Do

- Map cancer transition trajectories using dynamical systems theory and single-cell data

- Identify critical switches that govern cancer cell state transitions and cell fate decisions

- Build patient-specific Digital Cell Twins using Boolean network ensembles inferred from single-cell transcriptomics

- Develop AI foundation models for multi-scale drug response prediction leveraging large-scale perturbation data

- Build AI models for cancer prediction, biomarker discovery, and morphological analysis

- Collaborate with clinicians and experimentalists to validate computational predictions through organoids, animal models, and patient data