Wei Wei, PhD – an accomplished cancer researcher with expertise in biotechnology and cancer systems biology – has been promoted to ISB associate professor. The Wei Lab focuses on understanding how cancer cells adapt to therapeutic treatment to foster therapy resistance by coordinating their internal molecular machinery and how these adaptive changes evolve within diverse tumors influenced by the tumor microenvironment.
More than 300 people registered for Reimagine: Your Immune System, ISB’s annual virtual fundraiser, for an evening that included guest appearances Nobel laureate Dr. David Baltimore, immunology expert Dr. Mark Davis, ISB President Dr. Jim Heath, and a host of ISB researchers studying the human immune system.
To advance research at the intersection of COVID-19 and cancer, The Andy Hill CARE Fund has awarded ISB Assistant Professor Dr. Wei Wei a $100,000 grant to study chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), one of the most commonly diagnosed leukemias in the Western world that mainly affects older individuals.
Despite the aggressive nature of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC), circulating tumor cells that lead to metastases often go undetected in the blood. ISB researchers in Dr. Wei Wei’s lab and their collaborators have developed a novel method to better detect these circulating cells.
By using single-cell analysis to measure metabolic activities in rare disseminated tumor cells taken from non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, ISB researchers and their collaborators can accurately predict how patients will respond to various cancer therapies, and how treatments will impact a patient’s physiological performance and survival.
The Andy Hill Cancer Research Endowment (CARE) is a public-private partnership that supports cancer research in Washington state. CARE announced ISB Assistant Professor Dr. Wei Wei as a CARE Fund Distinguished Researcher and awarded him $500,000.
Prior to joining ISB’s faculty, Dr. Wei Wei earned his Ph.D. from Caltech and served as a faculty member at UCLA Medical School. In this Q&A, Wei discusses his research career to date, how research might change over the next decade, and much more.
