On the Job-Zi-Xuan Wang, PhD

Zi-Xuan (Zoe) Wang, PhD

Zi-XuanWang, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Surgery, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Pathology, Anatomy, and Cell Biology, where she is the Assistant Director of the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory. She joined Jefferson in October 2008 after six years at the Medical College of Georgia where she was the Scientific Director of the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory.

What is the focus of your research?

My passion is personalized medicine: to find out how and why certain therapies/medicines do or do not work and then to develop a customized approach to enhance a patient’s treatment. Since people can metabolize or respond to medicines in various ways, genetic analysis can predict a certain patient’s response, so that therapeutics can be administered and dosed optimally.

How do you use technology in your work?

DNA sequencing and gene chips have made testing individuals feasible. We characterize specific aspects of cancer and host genomes to predict whether a drug will be effective or whether serious side effects will emerge. Characterization of mutations in the patient’s genome can predict drug resistance and provide a personalized approach.

What motivates you on a day-today basis?

As a scientist, I am dedicated to improving the health of human beings and I especially enjoy working with the surgical faculty on pancreatic cancer and translational research. As a team, our analytical skills and emerging technologies have pushed us to the leading edge of diagnostics. Future collaborations with other Jefferson researchers will further advance our progress and ultimately improve medicine.