U.S. flag An official website of the United States government

On Oct. 1, 2024, the FDA began implementing a reorganization impacting many parts of the agency. We are in the process of updating FDA.gov content to reflect these changes.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration
  1. Home
  2. About FDA
  3. FDA Organization
  4. Office of the Commissioner
  5. Office of the Chief Scientist
  6. National Center for Toxicological Research
  7. Science & Research (NCTR)
  8. Wen Zou
  1. Science & Research (NCTR)

Wen Zou Ph.D.

Visiting Scientist — Division of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics

Dr. Wen Zou
Wen Zou, Ph.D.
(870) 543-7121
NCTRResearch@fda.hhs.gov  

Back to NCTR Principal Investigator page

About  |  Publications |  Lab Members

Background

Dr. Wen Zou received a Bachelor of Science degree in microbiology and a Master of Science degree in molecular microbiology from Shandong University, China. Dr. Zou received a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular microbiology from Kyoto University in Japan, after a two year postdoctoral experience at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She joined FDA’s National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR) in 2006 as a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Microbiology. Dr. Zou was appointed as a visiting scientist in 2009 in the Division of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics. She has received several awards for her work at FDA, including the “NCTR Director’s Award,”  “NCTR Outstanding Service Award,” “FDA Group Recognition Award,” and “FDA Group Award on Excellence in Analytical Science.”

Research Interests

Dr. Zou's research expertise lies in broad scientific areas including biomedical informatics, text mining, data mining, and food safety data analysis. Her primary research is in the areas of:

  • Prescription opioid-associated safety-signal detection and verification from FDA Spontaneous Reporting Systems (SRSs, such as FAERS) and Electronic Health Records. She started with all adverse events, then focus on cardiovascular related risks.
  • Sex and ethnic disparities on prescription opioid-related cardiovascular diseases.
  • Safety and risk assessment of cannabis-derived products.

Dr. Zou has been a Principal Investigator (PI), Co-PI, or participating scientist in more than ten research projects at NCTR and with other FDA Centers. Currently, she is the PI for two projects:

  • Identification of sex differences on prescription opioid use (POU)-related cardiovascular risks by big data analysis
  • Supporting the Cannabis Policy Council/CFSAN on the project of Certificate of Analysis of cannabis-derived products.
     

Professional Societies/National and International Groups

International Association for Food Protection
Member
2013 – Present

Chinese Association for Food Protection in North America 
Board member
2014 – 2020

President elect
2016 – 2019

 

Select Publications

Publication titles are linked to text abstracts on PubMed.

RxNorm for Drug Name Normalization: A Case Study of Prescription Opioids in the FDA Adverse Events Reporting System.
Le H, Chen R, Harris S, Fang H, Lyn-Cook B, Hong H, Ge W, Rogers P, Tong W, and Zou W*. 
Frontiers in Bioinformatics. 2024 Jan 5:3:1328613. doi: 10.3389/fbinf.2023.1328613.
 

A Systematic Analysis and Data Mining of Opioid-Related Adverse Events Submitted to the FAERS Database. 
Le H, Hong H, Ge W, Francis H, Lyn-Cook B, Hwang YT, Rogers P, Tong W, and Zou W*. 
Experimental Biology and Medicine. 2023 Nov;248(21):1944-1951. doi:10.1177/15353702231211860.
 

Assessing Reproducibility of Inherited Variants Detected with Short Read Whole Genome Sequencing.
Pan B, Ren L, Onuchic V, Guan M, Kusko R, Bruinsma S, Trigg L, Scherer A, Ning B, Zhang C, Glidewell-Kenney C, Xiao C, Donaldson E, Sedlazeck FJ, Schroth G, Yavas G, Grunenwald H, Chen H, Meinholz H, Meehan J, Wang J, Yang J, Foox J, Shang J, Miclaus K, Dong L, Shi L, Mohiyuddin M, Pirooznia M, Gong P, Golshani R, Wolfinger R, Lababidi S, Sahraeian SME, Sherry S, Han T, Chen T, Shi T, Hou W, Ge W, Zou W, Guo W, Bao W, Xiao W, Fan X, Gondo Y, Yu Y, Zhao Y, Su Z, Liu Z, Tong W, Xiao W, Zook JM, Zheng Y, Hong H *. 
Genome Biol. 2022 Jan 3;23(1):2. doi: 10.1186/s13059- 021-02569-8.
 

Discovering Drug-Drug Associations in the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System Database with Data Mining Approaches.
Zhao W., Le H., Chen J., Duggirala H., Forshee R., Botsis T., Francis H., Hong H., Tong W., Hwang Y., and Zou W*. 
IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (BIBM). 2021, pp. 1197-1204, doi: 10.1109/BIBM52615.2021.9669460.
 

Text Fingerprinting and Topic Mining in the Prescription Opioid Use Literature. 
Le H., Zhou J., Zhao W., Perkins R., Ge W., Lyn-Cook B., Francis H., Hong H., Tong W., and Zou W*. 
IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (BIBM). 2021, pp. 2741-2748, doi:10.1109/BIBM52615.2021.9669550.
 

An End-to-End Framework for Biomedical Event Trigger Identification with Hierarchical Attention and Adaptive Cost Learning.
Zhang J., Fang D., Zhao W*., Yang J., Zou W., Jiang X., and He T. 
International Journal of Data Mining and Bioinformatics. 2020, Vol.23 No.3. DOI: 10.1504/IJDMB.2020.107876.
 

Persistent Organic Pollutants in Food: Contamination Sources, Health Effects and Detection Methods. 
Guo W., Pan B., Sakkiah S., Yavas G., Ge W., Zou W., Tong W., and Hong H*.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019, 16(21): 4361. doi: 10.3390/ijerph16224361.
 

Mechanistic Roles of MicroRNAs in Hepatocarcinogenesis : A Study of Thioacetamide with Multiple Doses and Time-Points of Rats.
Dweep H., Morikawa Y., Gong B., Yan J., Liu Z., Chen T., Bisgin H., Zou W., Hong H., Shi T., Gong P., Castro C., Uehara T., Wang Y., and Tong W. 
Scientific Reports. 2017, volume 7, Article number: 3054.
 

Best Setting of Model Parameters in Applying Topic Modeling on Textual Documents. 
Zou W., Zhao W., Chen J.J., and Perkins P.  
Proceedings of the 8th ACM International Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Health Informatics, 2017. 
 

A Novel Procedure on Next Generation Sequencing Data Analysis Using Text Mining Algorithm.
Zhao W., Chen J.J., Perkins P., Liu Z., Wang Y., Hong H., Tong W., and Zou W*.
BMC Bioinformatics. 2016, 17:213, DOI 10.1186/s12859-016-1075-9.
 

Text Mining for Identifying Topics in the Literatures About Adolescent Substance Use and Depression.
Wang S.H., Ding Y., Zhao W., Yu K., Huang Y.X., Perkins R., Zou W., and Chen J.J.
BMC Public Health. 2016, 16:279, DOI: 10.1186/s12889-016-2932-1. 
 

Biomarker Identification from Next-Generation Sequencing Data for Pathogen Bacteria Characterization and Surveillance.
Zhao W., Chen J.J., Foley S., Wang Y., Basinger J., and Zou W. 
Biomarkers in Medicine. 2015, doi:10.2217/bmm.15.88.
 

A Heuristic Approach to Determine an Appropriate Number of Topics in Topic Modeling.
Zhao W., Chen J.J., Liu Z., Ge W., Ding Y., and Zou W.
BMC Bioinformatics Proceedings. 2015, 16 Suppl 14:S8.
 

Topic Modeling for Cluster Analysis of Large Biological and Medical Datasets.
Zhao W., Zou W., and Chen J.J. 
BMC Bioinformatics. 2014, 15(Suppl 11):S11 doi:10.1186/1471-2105-15-S11-S11.
 

Data Mining Tools for Salmonella Characterization: Application to Gel-Based Fingerprinting Analysis.
Zou W., Tang H., Zhao W., Meehan J., Foley S.L., Lin W.J., Chen H.C., Fang H., Nayak R., and Chen J.J.
BMC Bioinformatics. 2013, 14(Suppl 14):S15.
 

Meta-Analysis of Pulse-Field Gel Electrophoresis Fingerprints Based on a Constructed Salmonella Database.
Zou W., Chen H.C., Hise K.B., Tang H., Foley S., Meeham J., Lin W.J., Nayak R., Xu J., Fang H., and Chen J.J.
PLoS ONE. 2013 8(3): e59224. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0059224.
 

A Prediction System for Rapid Identification of Salmonella Serotypes Based on the Pulse-Field Gel Electrophoresis Fingerprints.
Zou W., Lin W.J., Hise K.B., Chen H.C., Keys C., and Chen, J.J.
Journal of Clinical Microbiology. 2012, 50:1524-1532.
 

Microarray Analysis of Virulence Gene Profiles in Salmonella Serovars from Food/Food Animal Environment.
Zou W., Al-Khaldi S.F., Branham W.S., Han T., Fuscoe J.C., Han J., Foley S.L., Xu J., Hong F., Cerniglia C.E., and Nayak R. 
Journal of Infection in Developing Countries. 2011, 5:94-105. 
 

Evaluation of Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis Profiles for Identification of Salmonella Serotypes.
Zou W., Lin W.J., Foley S.L., Chen C.H., Nayak R., and Chen J.J.
Journal of Clinical Microbiology. 2010, 48:3122–3126.
 

Microarray Analysis of Antimicrobial Resistance Genes in Salmonella from Preharvest Poultry Environment.
Zou W., Frye J.G., Chang C.W., Liu J.J., Cerniglia C.E., and Nayak R.
Journal of Applied Microbiology. 2009, 107:906-914.
 

Lab Members

Contact information for all lab members:
(870) 543-7121
NCTRResearch@fda.hhs.gov  

Li Ma, Ph.D. candidate
ORISE student

Contact Information
Wen Zou
(870) 543-7121
Expertise
Expertise
Approach
Domain
Technology & Discipline
Toxicology
Back to Top