Zihai Li MD, PhD

Dr. Zihai Li is a board-certified medical oncologist and an expert in the field of cancer immunology, chaperone biology and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. His research group has made fundamental contributions in the area of GP96/GRP94. They discovered the ATPase activity of GP96, proved its roles in chaperoning antigenic peptides, genetically mapped a majority of its key clients (including multiple Toll-like receptors, integrins, Wnt co-receptor LRP5/6, GARP, CD91 and GP-Ib-IX-V complex), pinpointed its client-binding domain, established its co-chaperone CNPY3, and illuminated its functions in several key biological processes (hematopoiesis, innate immunity, tolerance, anti-cancer immunity, oncogenesis, etc.).

Dr. Li is the principal investigator for multiple Research Project Grants (R01s), as well as a Research Program Project Grant (P01) from the National Institutes of Health. He is a clinical scholar of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation. The current work of the Li laboratory focuses on developing better immunotherapeutics in the forms of antibodies, adoptive T cell transfer and immune checkpoint blockers, aiming to reverse and reprogram the tolerogenic tumor microenvironment for cancer cure. Fundamental mechanisms of immune regulation are being studied in parallel.