Jiguang WANG (王吉光)

Padma Harilela Associate Professor of Life Science

Division of Life Science
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
Center for Systems Biology and Human Health
State Key Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)

Office 5577, Academic Building
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)
Clear Water Bay, Kowloon
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China

E-mail: echo khxboh@vtu.il | tr '[b-{]' '[a-z]'

Research Questions

Recent advances in next-generation sequencing are revolutionizing numerous areas in life science and medicine. My research is focused on discovering and elucidating functional genomic alterations in complex human diseases, such as intracranial cancers and vascular malformations, by developing and/or applying computational methods based on multi-omics integration, statistics, and machine learning, aiming to bridge the gaps among data, bench, and bedside. More specifically, my team has been mainly working on the following two scientific questions.

• Question 1: How does clonal evolution drive cancer progression that leads to malignant transformation and therapeutic resistance?
  Clonal evolution of cancer is a major challenge leading to treatment failure, but the molecular mechanisms of how cancer cells evolve and gain the capability of surviving intensive chemo- and/or radio- therapies remain elusive. Therefore, it is critically important to characterize the spatial and temporal dynamics of cancer cells and thereby mathematically modelling this process via big data integration. We have been working on diffuse gliomas, the most common and aggressive forms of primary tumors in adult brain whose treatment outcome is still very poor. Current therapies inevitably lead to tumor recurrence and the recurrent gliomas commonly become treatment resistance and incurable. Analyzing longitudinal and single-cell multi-omics data on this disease, our team aims to address the following questions: a) why cancer cells always display complex patterns of intratumoral heterogeneity; b) what is the temporal order of multiple somatic mutations detected in various cancer clones; c) how to predict the evolutionary path and clinical response of cancer cells under a certain therapy based on the sign seen earlier; and d) what are the key factors in tumor and its microenvironment that shape cancer evolution and determine cancer cell response under clinical intervention. In the process of addressing these questions, we will be able to unravel the mysteries of cancer evolution and it might provide a theoretical foundation for designing new means of treatment or diagnostics for better precision cancer medicine via targeting cancer dynamics.


• Question 2: What is the role of genetic interaction between germline variants and somatic mutations in initializing and regulating the development of cancer and other genetic disorders?
  Somatic genomic and epigenomic mutations are regarded as the direct drivers of cancer initialization and evolution, whereas de novo and inherited germline alterations could predispose the cancer risk and regulate population-specific disease incidence and treatment response. However, the underlying genetic interactions between germline variants and somatic mutations remain unclear, and the biological and medical implications of these interactions have not been extensively explored. New technologies of genomic sequencing allow low-cost profiling of somatic and germline mutations in not only case-unaffected-parental trios but also disease lesions at a high resolution, providing a unique opportunity to systematically investigate disease-relevant genomes by uncovering the joint contribution of the germline variants and somatic mutations in the process of disease development. Understanding whether and how the germline risk alleles interact with somatic mutations in terms of pathway activation and/or cellular interaction will help us to better understand disease etiology for the purpose of developing novel methods for genome-guided disease risk evaluation and personalized clinical intervention.

EXPERIENCE

• 2021.07 - now: Asscociate Professor, LIFS & CBE, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)
• 2016.12 - 2021.06: Assistant Professor, LIFS & CBE, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)
• 2015.05 - 2016.11: Associate Research Scientist and Precision Medicine Fellow, Department of Biomedical Informatics and Department of Systems Biology, Columbia University
• 2011.10 - 2015.04: Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Department of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University
• 2006.09 - 2011.07: PhD, Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences
• 2002.09 - 2006.07: BSc, Department of Information and Computational Science, Beijing Institute of Technology

HONORS AND AWARDS

• 2021: Padma Harilela Associate Professor of Life Science (夏利萊夫人生命科學副教授), HKUST named professorship program
• 2021: Zhong Nanshan Youth Science and Technology Innovation Award
• 2021: School of Science, School Research Award, HKUST
• 2020: NC 2020 was elected as one of China’s top 10 research advances in glioma research in 2020, Chinese glioma collaborative research group
• 2020: AUA Scholar Award, Asian Universities Alliance
• 2019: Excellent Young Scientists Fund (國家優秀青年科學家基金) of the 2019 National Natural Science Foundation of China
• 2019: School of Engineering Young Investigator Research Award of HKUST
• 2018: Cell 2018 was elected as one of China’s top 10 research advances in life sciences in 2018, The Chinese Union of Life Science Societies
• 07/2017-04/2018: Pilot project scheme, a collaborative grants for innovative interdisciplinary research involving quantitative scientists and cancer biologists from Physical Sciences-Oncology Centers (PS-OC) at Columbia University (US$25,000)
• 2016: Travel fellowship of Systems Approaches to Cancer Biology Conference sponsored by the NCI
• 2016: Winner in the Best Poster Competition at Department of Systems Biology Retreat
• 2015: Precision Medicine Fellowship, Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (US$200,000)
• 2014: Travel fellowship of 10th International Symposium on Bioinformatics Research and Applications (US$1,500)
• 2012: Excellent PhD thesis Award of Chinese Academy of Sciences
• 2011: Special Prize of President Scholarship of Chinese Academy of Sciences
• 2009: Presidential Outstanding Research Scholarship of Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science
• 2006: Beijing Outstanding Graduates and Admission with waiver of postgraduate entrance examination
• 2005: Honorable Prize in International Mathematical Contest in Modeling
• 2004: Second Class Prize in Chinese Contemporary Undergraduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling
• 2002: First Class Prize in Chinese Math Olympiad and waiver of national college entrance examination

PUBLICATIONS

PRESENTATIONS