Wei Wei, PhD

Andy Hill CARE Distinguished Researcher and Associate Professor

ISB

wei.wei@isbscience.org Visit Wei Lab Website →

Dr. Wei Wei is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Systems Biology. He also has the position of Affiliate Faculty at the Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute of the University of Washington. He received his B.S. in Fundamental Sciences (Mathematics and Physics) at Tsinghua University (Beijing) and M.S. in Materials Sciences and Engineering at UC San Diego. He obtained his Ph.D. at California Institute of Technology in 2014 with cross-disciplinary training that included both physical and biological sciences. Before joining ISB, Wei was an Assistant Professor at UCLA until mid-2018.

Wei received the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Student Abroad in 2013. In 2014, he was the sole recipient of the Milton and Francis Clauser Doctoral Prize – the highest honor for a Caltech Ph.D. He received the Andy Hill Cancer Research Endowment Distinguished Researchers award in 2019. Dr. Wei has been serving as either program director or project lead in various nationwide cancer research consortium-funded projects. Some of these initiatives include the NCI-funded ISB/UCLA Physical Sciences in Oncology Network Program (PS-ON), ISB/UW Innovative Molecular Analysis Technologies (IMAT) program, ISB/UCLA Centers of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (CCNE) program, and ISB/Yale/UCLA Cancer Systems Biology Consortium (CSBC) program.

Wei’s research interests reside in a highly cross-disciplinary field of BioMEMS, molecular and cellular analysis, and systems biomedicine. The overarching goal of the Wei Lab is to harness systems biology thinking and approaches to address critical questions and cultivate new understanding in both fundamental and translational cancer research. In cancer biology, the primary focus lies in understanding the phenotypic plasticity of cancer cells and its role in fostering non-genetic (adaptive) drug resistance, a form of resistance distinct from the Darwinian selection of resistant genotypes. The goal is to elucidate how cancer cells coordinate their internal molecular machinery to adapt to therapeutic stress and to understand how these adaptive changes evolve within the heterogeneous tumor and are modulated by the tumor microenvironment (TME). The lab scrutinizes this process across multiple molecular landscapes and at various temporal resolutions, to gain comprehensive insights at both mechanistic and systems levels. This line of inquiry also propels the development of innovative single-cell multi-omics and spatial multi-omics tools. On the translational research front, the lab is committed to advancing liquid biopsy-based predictive cancer diagnostics through the lens of disseminated/circulating tumor cells (DTCs/CTCs), and to revolutionizing functional precision medicine with needle biopsy-based organotypic drug sensitivity assays as companion diagnostics.

2014
Ph.D. in Materials Sciences, California Institute of Technology

2008
M.S. in Materials Sciences and Engineering, UC San Diego

2005
B.S. in Fundamental Sciences (Mathematics and Physics), Tsinghua University

Single-cell/spatial multi-omics, cancer epigenetic plasticity, non-genetic drug resistance, functional precision medicine, cancer molecular diagnostics

Yang, Liwei, Juho Kim, Long Chen, Wei Wei, and Jun Wang. 2024. “Detection of >400 Cluster of Differentiation Biomarkers and Pathway Proteins in Single Immune Cells by Cyclic Multiplex In Situ Tagging for Single-Cell Proteomic Studies.” Analytical Chemistry. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.4c04239. Cite

Flower, Cameron T., Chunmei Liu, Hui-Yu Chuang, Xiaoyang Ye, Hanjun Cheng, James R. Heath, Wei Wei, and Forest M. White. 2024. “Signaling and Transcriptional Dynamics Underlying Early Adaptation to Oncogenic BRAF Inhibition.” BioRxiv, 2024–02. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.19.581004.abstract. Cite

Kim, Jungwoo, Rachel H. Ng, JingXin Liang, Dazy Johnson, Young Shik Shin, Arion F. Chatziioannou, Michael E. Phelps, Wei Wei, Raphael D. Levine, and James R. Heath. 2024. “Kinetic Trajectories of Glucose Uptake in Single Cancer Cells Reveal a Drug-Induced Cell-State Change Within Hours of Drug Treatment.” The Journal of Physical Chemistry. B. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcb.4c03663. Cite

Jiang, Jianjun, Na Ge, Yuzhi Wang, Juntao Qi, Guibiao Wen, Xiufen Gu, Xuewen Yu, et al. 2023. “Castration Model Illuminates Sex Differences in Healthy Aging: Insights from Metabolome and Transcriptome Analyses.” bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.12.27.573488. Cite

Cheng, Hanjun, Yin Tang, Zhonghan Li, Zhili Guo, James R. Heath, Min Xue, and Wei Wei. 2023. “Non-Mass Spectrometric Targeted Single-Cell Metabolomics.” Trends in Analytical Chemistry: TRAC 168:117300. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trac.2023.117300. Cite

Flower, Cameron T., Chunmei Liu, James R. Heath, Wei Wei, and Forest M. White. 2023. “Abstract 4876: A Systems Pharmacology Approach to Discover Synergistic Targeted Therapy Combinations.” Cancer Research 83 (7_Supplement): 4876. https://doi.org/10.1158/1538-7445.AM2023-4876. Cite

Ye, Shengda, Bin Yang, Tingbao Zhang, Wei Wei, Zhiqiang Li, Jincao Chen, and Xiang Li. 2022. “Identification of an Immune-Related Prognostic Signature for Glioblastoma by Comprehensive Bioinformatics and Experimental Analyses.” Cells 11 (19): 3000. https://doi.org/10.3390/cells11193000. Cite

Su, Yapeng, Dan Yuan, Daniel G. Chen, Rachel H. Ng, Kai Wang, Jongchan Choi, Sarah Li, et al. 2022. “Multiple Early Factors Anticipate Post-Acute COVID-19 Sequelae.” Cell 0 (0). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2022.01.014. Cite

Wei Lab
Institute for Systems Biology
401 Terry Ave N
Seattle WA 98109

Email: wei.wei@isbscience.org