About Jiang Zhong, PhD

My laboratory develops innovative microfluidic single-cell technology for molecular characterization of individual mammalian cells; with a focus on gene interactions induced stepwise changes to the fate of a cell, in both normal development and carcinogenesis. My unique contribution to the field is the development of a microfluidic platform to utilize single-cell transcriptome analysis for cancer diagnosis and treatment evaluation. Within a cancer specimen, there are many cells at different stages of carcinogenesis, and clustering these cells by similarity can digitally reconstruct the stepwise progression from a normal cell into a cancer cell (carcinogenesis). This approach turns the heterogeneous noise in cancer specimens into informative news of carcinogenesis. Understanding the cell fate decision due to stepwise carcinogenesis could provide intervention targets for cancer therapy, guide precision treatment for individual patients, and enable monitoring of treatment efficiency in real time by molecular profiling of circulating tumor cells (CTC). My future research will focus on clinical applications of the single-cell technology we developed with NSF and NIH supports. My multidisciplinary expertise enables me to converge different fields as well as orchestrate engineers and physicians to address real clinical challenges in cancer diagnosis and treatment to tackle some of the most important problems in the field, such as overcoming treatment resistance of cancer.