Professor
Zhengzhou University
China
Dr. Yi Zhang graduated from Henan Medical University in 1986. And then he obtained his PhD degree focusing on tumor immunology at Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and did my postdoctoral training in Drs. Thierry Boon and Pierre van der Bruggen’s lab at Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Brussels Branch from 1999-2004. After that, he moved to University of Chicago and worked as Research Assistant Professor in Dr. Hans Schreiber’s lab focusing on dissecting tumor microenvironment. In 2006, he was recruited as Tenure-track Assistant Professor in tumor immunotherapy center in Medical University of South Carolina. Currently, he is a distinguished Professor and Director in Biotherapy Center & Cancer Center at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University in China. His laboratory investigates the key cellular components such as effector T cells, regulatory immune cells and caner stem cells in tumor microenvironment and their clinical relevance, especially in lung cancer and esophageal cancer. He concentrates on the aberrant expression of cancer-testis (CT) antigens (such as MAGE-A3, MAGE-C2, NY-ESO-1 etc.) and the corresponding antigen-specific T cells, tumor newly identified targets from cancer stem cells in lung cancer and esophageal cancer. Furthermore, they are dedicated to develop TCR or CAR gene-modified T cells for potential antigen-specific T cell therapy. They are working with 38 clinical trials of CAR-T, TCR-T cells, neoantigen-based vavvines and PD-1Ab targeting different solid tumors as well. He has published more than 310 papers and 206 of them in internationally peer-reviewed journals including Nat Cell Biol, J Clin Invest, Blood, Nat Commun., Mol Cancer, Cancer Res., Cancer Immunol Res. Oncoimmunology, PLoS Pathogen, Oncogene, etc. He has acted as the members of the editorial board of several English Journals such as J HEMATOL ONCOL, Biomarker Research, Front. Cell Dev. Biol., Asia Pac J Clin Nutr., Front Oncol., Cancer Control, and a reviewer for over 60 English journals.