Jun Wang, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Pathology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Speaker

Dr. Jun Wang is currently an Assistant Professor of Pathology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He got his PhD in Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Postdoc training at Yale by Dr. Lieping Chen. Dr. Wang possesses around twenty years of expertise in cancer immunology with a focus on the discovery of novel immune feedback modulators and how to utilize these molecular pathways for immunotherapy of cancer and beyond. Other than his early experience in the liver toxicity mechanisms of anti-4-1BB immunotherapy, he built cutting-edge genome-scale receptor and function array technologies to characterize FGL1/LAG-3, Siglec-15 as promising cancer immunotherapy targets. These works informed the development of anti-LAG-3 Relatilmab that blocks both FGL1 and MHC-II ligands, which was recently approved by FDA for melanoma in combination with Nivolumab, and led to the clinical development of several anti-Siglec-15 programs in human cancers. Dr. Wang’s experiences in immunotherapy also have been recently applied to understand COVID-19 immunopathogenesis and the development of novel COVID-19 antibodies that targets virus-immune interactions, as well as developing innovative strategies for immunotherapy of autoimmune diseases.

Dr. Wang was the founding scientist for NextCure Inc., He also co-founded Rootpath Genomics, and is serving as an advisor for Rootpath, BMS, and Hanmi. Other than the NIH awards, Dr. Wang recently received V Scholar Award, the IOYIF Research Scientist Award, Mark Foundation ASPIRE award, the Team Science Award and Young Investigator Award from the Melanoma Research Alliance.