Yuzhuo Wang

Dr. Yuzhuo Wang has a dual appointment as a Senior Scientist at Vancouver Prostate Centre and BC Cancer Agency. He is also the Founder of the Living Tumor Laboratory (www.livingtumorlab.com) and a tenured faculty member in Department of Urologic Sciences at UBC. Dr. Wang did his Ph.D. at the University of Hong Kong, and joined Dr. Gerald R Cunha at University of California, San Francisco as a postdoctoral fellow in 1997. Since then, he has authored/co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed original articles and review papers, including publications in Cancer Research, PNAS, Cancer Cell, Clinical Cancer Research, and the EMBO Journal. In addition to proposing novel hypotheses on “prostate stem cells”, “epithelial-immune cell transition (EIT)” and “cancer-generated lactic acid is critical, immunosuppressive metabolite rather than a ‘waste product’ (which has been believed for more than 90 years)”. Dr. Wang is recognized for his pioneering work in the field of prostate cancer modeling, he was the first to establish tissue recombination model of hormonal prostatic carcinogenesis. He also developed the first model of hormonal carcinogenesis in human prostatic epithelium. Moreover, he is responsible for a novel method for establishing and maintaining transplantable, patient-derived xenograft models that closely resemble patients’ malignancies. His contributions have been revolutionizing the fields of patient-derived xenograft modeling. Dr. Wang has received numerous awards for his academic achievements in cancer research, such as a Prostate Cancer Foundation Research Award, US (2007), the Translation Research Award from Roche Canada (2009), an Overseas Chinese Scholars Award (Distinguished Young Scholar Award, Category B) from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (2009), the Innovative Scholar Award from the International Cancer Alliance for Research and Education (ICARE), US (2010), an UBC Faculty of Medicine Distinguished Achievement Award, Canada (2011), an UBC Department of Urologic Sciences Outstanding Academic Performance Award (2013).