Prof. ZHENG Zongli (鄭宗立)

Dr Zongli Zheng received his PhD degree from the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Karolinska Institutet in 2011, under the supervision of Prof. Weimin Ye. He then moved to the United States and did his postdoctoral training under the guidance of Dr John Iafrate at the Department of Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and was supported by the Swedish Research Council International Postdoc Fellowship. In July 2015, he joined the Department of Biomedical Sciences at City University of Hong Kong.

• Gene rearrangement in cancer
• Molecular epidemiology
• Next generation sequencing
• CRISPR genome editing
• Biotechnology 

Cancer treatment is being revolutionized by the development of targeted therapies that are less toxic and immunotherapies that render durable responses. A key to these therapies is matching the right approaches and drugs to the right patients. Dr Zheng’s lab is interested in identifying and characterizing genetic abnormalities that may predict cancer treatment, using methods and techniques from epidemiology, molecular biology and bioinformatics. Current research topics within the theme of Precision Medicine include:

1. Gene rearrangement detection using the Anchored Multiplex PCR (AMP) for targeted next generation sequencing.
2. Validation of gene rearrangement functions using the CRISPR-Cas9 system.
3. Detection and evaluation of circulating tumor DNA for early detection of cancers.