Phillip Wang

Phillip Wang

Assistant professor

Institute Dept of Molecular, Cell and Cancer Biology

UMass Medical School Worcester

Born in the suburb of Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, I spent my childhood in a scenery village surrounded by rice fields. From my childhood, I was amazed by the colorful nature and always wondered how it works. In the late 80s, I went to the beautiful campus of Wuhan University . After graduated from college, I then got some training for four years in the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, ending up with a master degree in Biochemistry. Then I felt an urge to be exposed to the most exciting challenge in biology. Without doubt, USA is the first choice. So I found the chance in University of Missouri-Columbia in the fall of 1996, working in the lab of Michael Roberts. I focused on the signal transduction pathway triggered by the type I interferon, and earned my PhD in Pathobiology. Next I shifted my interest to mouse genetics with a direction of studying genes’ function in neural development and diseases in Dr. Richard Q. Lu’s Lab in UT Southwestern Medical Center. Since 2007, I worked in Dr. Michael Green’s Lab in University of Massachusetts.

Here I continued to use mouse as a model to dissect genes’ function in cancer and physiological conditions. My research interest lies in the gene’s expression and function, particularly those genes specifically expressed and functional in neural development, homeostatic, and diseased conditions. Diseases including brain cancer, malolfaction, intellectual disorders are particularly of my interest. I have been using various study tools including both biochemical and genetic approaches to address these questions. Particularly, using mouse as a model to address these questions is my expertise.

Molecular, Cell and Cancer Biology & pharmaceutical sciences