[4] As a postdoctoral fellow, he wrote a seminal paper explaining how one signalling rogue molecule in cancers could communicate with other cells.
Working alongside Liliana Attisano, Wrana co-discovered that the mutation of the MADR2 gene was responsible for some forms of colon cancer.
[9] In 2009, Wrana and colleague Ian Taylor developed Dynamic Network Modularity (Dynemo), a biological model that could help physicians predict whether a woman is more likely to survive and recover from breast cancer:[10][11][12] it achieved this by analysing how proteins and other components within cancer cells interact with each other in order to form networks,[10][13][14] and how alterations of these processes could have an impact on tumorigenesis,[15] as well as the usage of specific drugs in oncological therapies.
[20][21] He was recognised with the 2018 McLaughlin Medal from the Royal Society of Canada for his "pivotal contributions to our understanding of biology, human diseases, and its treatment" and his leadership in the promotion of "Canadian science through collaborative research facilities and international impact.
In August 2020, his research team used the robotics platform to screen thousands of positive samples for variants by rapidly sequencing fingerprint regions of the viral genome to look for key mutations.