Jean Wang

Dr. Jean Y. J. Wang received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, where she discovered the first prokaryotic protein kinase and elucidated a protein phosphorylation-regulated metabolic switch between the Krebs cycle and the Glyoxal cycle in the laboratory of Dr. Daniel E. Koshland, Jr. She was a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cancer Center where she cloned and characterized the ABL proto- oncogene in the laboratory of Dr. David Baltimore. Dr. Wang joined the faculty at UCSD in 1983 and has risen through the ranks to her current position as a Distinguished Professor in Medicine & Biology, and as the Associate Director of Basic Research at the Moores UCSD Cancer Center.

Dr. Wang's current research is focused on biological mechanisms that regulate the cellular decision to commit suicide in response to genotoxic, inflammatory and detachment stress. Her laboratory employs biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, mouse genetic models and high throughput technologies to interrogate the functional links among several cancer genes in the regulation of cell death. In particular, she has focused her research efforts on the ABL tyrosine kinase and the RB tumor suppressor. She is the holder of two patents on the detection and the treatment of CML, which is induced by the oncogenic BCR-ABL kinase.