Vaios Lab

Vaios Lab Overview

The overall goal of the Vaios Lab is to discover innovative biomarkers that inform the next generation of personalized therapies for patients with brain tumors. Precision medicine approaches require accurate longitudinal monitoring of tumor molecular evolution during cancer therapy. However, brain tumors are rarely amenable to repeated tissue sampling to guide initial therapy or treatment response assessment. Existing clinical imaging methods are also insufficient alone to establish a diagnosis or to differentiate treatment-related changes from tumor recurrence. To overcome these barriers, the lab leverages clinical trial-derived biospecimens and bioinformatics to enable biomarker discovery and identify factors driving treatment response and resistance. The Vaios Lab is supported by active NIH (K38CA292995, 3K38CA292995-02S1), Foundation (IRG-23-1077679-01-IRG) and Institutional (Duke Physician Scientist Strong Start Award) grants. The lab is embedded within the infrastructure and network of investigators of the Duke Department of Radiation Oncology and the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center, enabling rapid translation of discoveries into innovative, patient-centered clinical trials.

Current Research Interests

My lab utilizes bioinformatics approaches, applied to array and whole methylome sequencing, genomic variant, fragmentomic, radiomic and gene expression data, to study:

  1. Tumor and treatment-related effects on the local and systemic tumor microenvironment
  2. Biological mechanisms of radiation response and resistance

By understanding these fundamental mechanisms, we aim to develop novel biomarkers for tumor biology and radiation response.

Ongoing Projects

  1. Cell-free DNA methylation as a biomarker for tumor biology and clinical outcomes in glioblastoma

News

Headshots of Drs. Sperduto, Vaios, Kirkpatrick and Sulman

Survival Improves for Patients with Kidney Cancer and Brain Metastases, Study Finds

Patients with kidney cancer that has spread to the brain are living longer than patients treated in earlier eras, according to a large international study led by researchers at Duke. The study also identifies factors that can help physicians estimate prognosis and introduces an updated tool for assessing survival in the modern era of cancer treatment.
Dr. Dominic LaBella

LaBella and Duke Faculty Among Authors of the 2024 BraTS-MEN-RT Dataset

In January, Duke Radiation Oncology resident Dominic LaBella, MD (first author), along with Duke Radiation Oncology faculty Chunhao Wang, PhD; John Kirkpatrick, MD, PhD; Scott Floyd, MD, PhD; Zach Reitman, MD, PhD; Trey Mullikin, MD; and Eugene Vaios, MD, MBA, were among the authors of “The 2024 Brain Tumor Segmentation Challenge Meningioma Radiotherapy (BraTS-MEN-RT) dataset,”
Dr. Vaios

Vaios Receives DCI American Cancer Society Pilot Award

Congratulations to Eugene Vaios, MD, MBA, who was awarded a 2025 Duke Cancer Institute-American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant. His project, titled "Leveraging Cell-Free DNA Methylation Patterns to Develop a Non-Invasive Diagnostic and Surveillance Platform for Patients with Brain Tumors," builds on his recent findings from work supported by his K38 award from the National Cancer Institute. Dr.
Drs. Vaios, Floyd and Reitman

Vaios, Floyd, Reitman To Collaborate on Pilot Study

In 2022, Eugene Vaios, MD, MBA; Scott Floyd, MD, PhD; and Zach Reitman, MD, PhD, opened a biorepository trial to collect plasma samples from patients with primary and metastatic brain tumors receiving radiation therapy. The aim was to use these samples to identify liquid biomarkers that correlate with tumor biology, treatment response and clinical outcomes. 
Dr. Vaios

Vaios Awarded DCI Pilot Grant

Congratulations to Eugene Vaios, MD, MBA, who has been awarded a $50,000 yearlong Duke Cancer Institute Pilot Grant for the project "Leveraging Explainable AI to Develop a Non-invasive Radionecrosis Diagnostic Program for Patients with Brain Metastases." Co-PIs are Chunhao Wang, PhD, and neuroradiologist Evan Calabrese, MD, PhD.
Eugene Vaios, MD, MBA

Vaios Wins Duke OPSD Technician Support Award

Resident Eugene Vaios, MD, MBA, was awarded an R38 Technician Support Award for his proposal titled, "An Ensemble Diagnostic and Surveillance Platform: Integrating Deep Learning Radiomics Techniques with Liquid Biopsies to Elucidate Tumor Biology and Response to Radiotherapy in Glioblastoma."

Contact

Visit Dr. Vaios' Scholars@Duke profile. Contact Dr. Vaios at eugene.vaios@duke.edu.