Rugang Zhang, PhD

Rugang Zhang, PhD

Rugang Zhang, Ph.D., is deputy director of The Wistar Institute Cancer Center and professor and co-leader of the Gene Expression & Regulation Program at The Wistar Institute. It is the nation’s first independent research institution devoted solely to biomedical science and a world leader in cancer, immunology, virology, and infectious disease research.

Rugang joined Wistar in 2012 and is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania.

Rugang serves as a scientific reviewer for ovarian cancer-focused granting agencies, including National Institutes of Health/NCI study sections and the Department of Defense (DoD) Ovarian Cancer Research Program. Rugang was the recipient of the Liz Tilberis Early Career Award from the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, the DoD Ovarian Cancer Academy Award and the Inaugural Liz Tilberis Prize for Excellence in Ovarian Cancer Research from the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund Alliance. Rugang currently serves as principal investigator or project leader on many national peer reviewed grants and is a collaborator on multiple other national grants.

Rugang studies the biology of epithelial ovarian cancer, the most lethal gynecological malignancy in the developed world, to define novel targeted and combination therapeutic strategies. In particular, the Zhang Lab elucidated the role of epigenetic regulators in ovarian cancer and antitumor immunity in order to develop urgently needed epigenetics-based new therapies.