Gang Li, PhD

Human Genetics, Gene Expression and Biotechnology

Dr. Li’s lab is  interested in developing novel techniques to understand the mechanisms underlying the contribution of disease-associated genetic variants to the pathogenesis of, and/or the susceptibility to the diseases based on genome-wide association studies (GWAS). The diseases that we are particularly interested in are age-related diseases including neurodegenerative disorders, cardiovascular diseases and cancers. As we know, the incidence of age-related diseases rises exponentially along with age and aging is the largest single risk factor for age-related diseases. Among many hallmarks that contribute to aging,  cellular senescence is the most important driver of aging and age-related diseases. Therefore, our major focus is to reveal the mechanisms as well as the signaling pathways that activate cellular senescence in different types of cells related to different diseases. Our goal is to use human genetics (GWAS) as a guide to identify new drug targets and apply our new findings to develop allele-specific precision drugs for aging and age-related diseases.