Xiyuan Zhang, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, Department of Pediatrics, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Rutgers University. Over the last 15 years, Dr. Zhang has received interdisciplinary trainings in nutrition and epigenetics, and how both affect human cancer initiation, progression, and metastasis. After completing her MS in Human Nutrition from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dr. Zhang received her PhD in Cancer Biology from Georgetown University under the supervision of Dr. Leena Hilakivi-Clarke at Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her thesis research focused on the timing of dietary exposures and its impact on breast cancer treated with the anti-estrogen agent tamoxifen. Dr. Zhang developed preclinical rodent models of estrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer and for the first time demonstrated the impact of bioactive compounds and maternal obesity on tamoxifen resistance (Zhang et al. Clinical Cancer Research, 2017). Dr. Zhang was awarded and served as the principal investigator on a graduate student research award investigating the impact of maternal high-fat diet on transcriptome in mammary glands caused by in utero high-fat diet exposure.
After completing her PhD training, Dr. Zhang joined the laboratory of Dr. Jack Shern in the Pediatric Oncology Branch at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Dr. Zhang investigated the genetic and epigenetic alterations associated with the malignant transformation of Schwann cell-originated plexiform neurofibroma (PN) to malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor (MPNST) in patients with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1). Dr. Zhang’s broad background in cancer biology, epigenetics, and bioinformatics enabled her to establish novel research areas in the laboratory and develop novel analytic pipelines for large-scale data analysis. She was successful in: 1) demonstrating that polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) loss corrupted the enhancer landscape of a normal Schwann cells and causes an abnormal transcriptional circuitry that drives the oncogenic program of MPNST; 2) performing integrative analysis of single-cell sequencing data to demonstrate that PRC2-deficient MPNST cells are phenotypically stuck at a de-differentiated stage of a normal developmental trajectory (Zhang et al. Cell Reports, 2022). Moreover, Dr. Zhang built a single-cell NF1 tumor cell atlas and utilized it to inform biomarker discoveries in circulating proteomic data from NF1 patients. This rich multiomic dataset and resource provided valuable guidance for clinical annotation and early detection of malignant transformation in NF1.
Dr. Zhang is a recipient of the Early Investigator Research Award from the NF Research Program and a Concept Award from the Rare Cancer Research Program of the Department of Defense. Moreover, Dr. Zhang’s contribution to cancer research was recognized by the Scholar-in-Training Award from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), Women in Cancer Research Award from AACR, the Outstanding Postdoctoral Fellow Award and Crystal Mackall Excellence in Research Award from the NCI. Currently, research in the Zhang Lab at the Rutgers Cancer Institute is funded by the NJ Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Research Center of Excellence (PHORCE) and the New Investigator Award from the Department of Defense, focusing on understanding the oncogenic activation that drives the malignant transformation of NF1-associated nerve sheath tumors.