Zilai Wang, PhD

Zilai Wang, PhD, is Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Illinois College of Medicine Chicago. He has a broad background in molecular and cell biology and neurobiology of diseases. He has focused his study on the impact of cell of tumor origin on Glioblastoma (GBM) subtypes and phenotypes. GBM is the most aggressive and prevalent primary brain cancer. Development of effective therapeutics against GBM has been lagging due to many challenges arising from the unique pathological nature of GBM. Particularly, GBM is highly heterogenous and quickly develops drug resistance. Moreover, GBM is protected by the forbidden blood-brain barrier (BBB), excluding drugs from tumor-specific accumulation. It remains a pressing need for discovery of effective GBM drugs and development of novel delivery technologies to maximize the drug effect. In 2020, he joined the research group led by University of Illinois Cancer Center member Lijun Rong, PhD. They have developed a robust cell-based high-throughput screening platform that allows them to identify small molecule inhibitors specifically targeting Type 1 or Type 2 GBM.

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