Shuang Wang, PhD

In my doctoral research I made the surprising discovery that genetic changes induced by an important class of environmental carcinogens, the aromatic amines, failed to correlate with liver tumor formation (Wang et al. Env Mol Mutagen 2012). Subsequently I identified a novel oxidization pathway for the model aromatic amine 4-aminobiphenyl (Wang et al. Drug Metab Dispos 2015), that leads to redox imbalances and may contribute to liver tumor burden (Wang et al. Toxicol Sci 2015, Wang et al. Pharmacol Ther 2019). I was also involved in a successful collaboration that led to improved differentiation of ESC and iPSC into hepatocytes (Ogawa…Wang et al. Development 2013). Together these discoveries shaped my research interest in “epi-genetic” factors that control liver development and regeneration.In my postdoctoral training I began to explore how the epigenome regulate liver biology, leading to the discovery of a novel layer of epigenetic crosstalk that improves the regeneration capacity of the mammalian liver (Wang et al. Curr Top Dev Biol 2016, Chernyavskaya…Wang et al. Development 2017, Wang et al. Dev Cell 2019). I am currently investigating how epigenomic reprogramming affects hepatic stellate cell biology in the laboratory of Dr. Scott Friedman who first established these cells as the driver of liver fibrosis.