Wonhwa Cho, PhD, is the Liberal Arts and Sciences Endowed Chair, UIC Distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Chemistry in the UIC College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He joined UIC in 2017 and has been working on membrane lipids and proteins that interact with lipids for more than 30 years. Through continuous technical and conceptual innovation and synergistic collaboration, his lab has been able to solve a wide range of challenging problems associated with lipids. In particular, their innovative quantitative lipid imaging analysis has allowed them to investigate the mechanisms by which lipids control various cellular processes in unprecedented spatiotemporal detail. Also, their discovery that lipids, including cholesterol, directly and specifically interact with a wide variety of protein interaction domains led to development of a completely new class of lipid-protein interaction inhibitors as novel cancer drugs. He believes the application of their expertise and experience studying cholesterol signaling in breast cancer will yield much needed mechanistic information critical for future clinical and drug discovery work. Their contribution to the lipid field was recognized with the 2018 Avanti Award in Lipids from the Biophysical Society.
Wonhwa Cho, PhD
Professor
Chemistry
Liberal Arts and Sciences
Research Program
Translational Oncology Program (TO)
Phone: 312-996-4883
Email: [email protected]
