Tian-Li Wang, Ph.D.

Headshot of Tian-Li Wang
  • Director of the Molecular Genetics Laboratory of Female Reproductive Cancer
  • Professor of Pathology

Research Interests

Cancer genetics; epigenomics; chemoresistance in ovarian cancer; early detection of cancer; notch signaling; female reproductive cancer; chromatin remodeling and DNA damage repair ...read more

Background

Dr. Tian-Li Wang is the Professor of Pathology, Oncology, and Gynecology and Obstetrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She is the Director of the Molecular Genetics Laboratory of Female Reproductive Cancer and a senior member at the Breast and Ovarian Cancer Program at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins. She has been a leader in several program projects/grants including a multi-institutional Consortium Award from DoD-CDMRP (total budget 12 M). Currently she is an Executive Co-Director of the Ovarian Cancer SPORE funded by NCI.

Dr. Wang earned her undergraduate degree from the National Taiwan University and received a Ph.D. degree from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She went on to a post-doc training in the retina neural circuity research area at the University of Pennsylvania and subsequently, completed her training in Cancer Genetics at the Howard Hughes Medical Institution at Johns Hopkins. 

Her current research interests are genomic and epigenomic studies of ovarian cancer, cancer detection and prevention, as well as new therapeutic strategies to overcome chemoresistance.

...read more

Titles

  • Director of the Molecular Genetics Laboratory of Female Reproductive Cancer
  • Professor of Pathology
  • Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics
  • Professor of Oncology

Departments / Divisions

Centers & Institutes

Education

Degrees

  • Ph.D.; Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Maryland) (1995)
  • B.S.; National Taiwan University (Taiwan) (1989)

Research & Publications

Research Summary

 Ovarian carcinoma is one of the most deadly neoplastic diseases among women; however, little is known about the molecular etiology of this disease. Dr. Wang’s research focuses on understanding genetic and epigenetic bases of this devastating disease and applying the knowledge onto develop new cancer diagnostics, prevention, and therapeutics. Dr. Wang has developed approaches to elucidate the genetic alterations at both DNA-sequence and copy-number levels, including high-throughput mutational detection and digital karyotyping, a technology that permits the identification of copy number alterations in cancer on a genome-wide scale with high resolution. Using both strategies, she has performed a comprehensive analysis of gynecologic malignancies and her team has identified several novel oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes in ovarian cancers. Her team is currently focusing on revealing the tumor-promoting functions of NOTCH3 signaling and tumor-suppressor functions of the ARID1A pathway. More recently, her team started to explore global epigenetic alterations and elucidating functional roles played by chromatin modifiers during tumor initiation and progression.

Lab

Lab Website: Gynecologic Pathology Laboratory

Selected Publications

Stoeck A, Jung J, Guan B, Wu R-C, Zhu H, Blackshaw S, Shih Ie, Wang TL. Notch3 interactome analysis identified WWP2 as a negative regulator of Notch3 signaling in ovarian cancer. Plos Genetics . Oct 30;10(10):e1004751. PMID: 25356737

Yuyu Fun, et al, Wang TL* and Shih IeM. Inhibition of Spleen Tyrosine Kinase Potentiates Paclitaxel-Induced Cytotoxicity in Ovarian Cancer Cells by Stabilizing Microtubules. Cancer Cell, Jul 13;28(1):82-96.
PMID: 2609684 *Corresponding author

Guan B, Suryo Rahmanto Y, Wu RC, Wang Y, Wang Z, Wang TL, Shih IeM. Roles of deletion of arid1a, a tumor suppressor, in mouse ovarian tumorigenesis. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2014 Jun 4;106(7). PMID: 24899687  * Co-corresponding author

Jones S, Wang TL, Shih IeM, Mao TL, Nakayama K, Roden R, Glas R, Slamon D, LA Jr Diaz,Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, Velculescu VE, Papadopoulos N. Frequent mutations of chromatin remodeling gene ARID1A in ovarian clear cell carcinoma. Science. 2010; 330(6001):228-31.  PMID: 20826764

Wang TL, Maierhofer C, Speicher MR, Lengauer C, Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, Velculescu VE. Digital Karyotyping. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2002; 99:16156-16161

Patents

Digital Karyotyping
Patent # US7704687B2 | 

Digital Karyotyping

Small molecule compounds targeting pbx1 transcriptional complex
Patent # US20180118688A1 | 

P13K pathway mutations in cancer
Patent # US9580750B2 | 

Detection of cancer by measuring genomic copy number and strand length in cell-free dna
Patent # WO2009051842A2 | 

Detection of cancer by measuring genomic copy number and strand length in cell-free DNA

Small molecule compounds targeting pbx1 transcriptional complex
Patent # WO2016172437A2 | 

Small molecule compounds targeting pbx1 transcriptional complex

Contact for Research Inquiries

CRBII, Rm 306
1550 Orleans Street,
Baltimore, MD 21231 map

Academic Affiliations & Courses

Graduate Program Affiliation

Pathobiology

Cellular and Molecular Graduate Program

Is this you? Edit Profile
back to top button