Betty Hay Lecture by Jing Yang

Dr. Jing Yang is a Professor of Pharmacology and of Pediatrics at the Univ. of California, San Diego and the co-Leader of the Cancer Biology and Signaling Program at UCSD Moores Cancer Center. She completed her PhD in Molecular Cancer Biology with Dr. Sally Kornbluth at Duke University and then became a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Robert Weinberg at Whitehead Institute.  Her postdoctoral research identified a critical role of the TWIST1 transcription factor and Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) in tumor metastasis, which helped to bring EMT to the forefront of cancer research. Dr. Yang joined the University of California, San Diego as an Assistant Professor in 2006 and was promoted to full professor in 2016.

Dr. Yang’s research focuses on understanding the molecular basis of tumor metastasis. Her group demonstrated the critical role of epithelial-mesenchymal plasticity in the metastatic cascade. Her group also identified extracellular matrix (ECM) stiffening, invadopodia-mediated ECM degradation, and epithelial polarity as being critical regulatory mechanisms in EMT and tumor metastasis.  Her team continues to combine cell and molecular biology tools, 3D organoids culture, mouse tumor models, functional genomics, and various imaging techniques to uncover novel signaling pathways regulating epithelial-mesenchymal plasticity and tumor metastasis.