EDUCATION:
MD: Chongqing Medical University
PhD: Peking Union Medical College
Post-Doctoral Fellow: Medical University of South Carolina
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Cellular Senescence
Neurodegenerative Disorders
Developmental Cancer Therapeutics
ACADEMIC BIOGRAPHY:
Dr. Gavin Wang is an Associate Professor of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina. He received his M.D. from Chongqing Medical University and his Ph.D. in Molecular Cell Biology from Peking Union Medical College. As a physician scientist, Dr. Wang has a broad biomedical research experience and expertise in the areas of cellular senescence (cellular aging), oxidative stress, stem cell biology, developmental cancer therapeutics, and molecular neurobiology. His pioneer work was the first demonstration that cancer therapy-induced long-term bone marrow suppression is attributable to sustained oxidative stress and the induction of premature senescence in the hematopoietic stem cell population. His recent study was the first to discover that activation of the p53-p21 senescence pathway is critical for oxidative stress-induced senescence in breast cancer stem cells. More recently, his lab has established an in vitro cellular senescence model of human microglial cells and demonstrated that senescent microglia display the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP), producing high levels of neuroinflammation-related inflammatory cytokines. This new model has provided his lab a valuable new tool for studying the biology and clinical applications of cellular senescence. Dr. Wang has published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers and have served as a reviewer for a variety of funding agencies, including NIH, DoD, NASA, the Medical Research Council (MRC) of United Kingdom, and United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF). He also serves on the editorial boards of several scientific journals, and the major goals of his lab’s current research projects are aimed at understanding the roles of cellular senescence in age-associated disorders, including cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.