Dr. Siqi Chen joined the Department of Medicine in the division of Oncology as an instructor in January 2023. Dr. Chen received her PhD degree from The University of Hong Kong before joining Dr. Li Ding’s lab at Washington University in St. Louis for her postdoc research training. As a graduate student, she studied multiple genes that contribute to tumor progression and therapy resistance in head and neck cancers. From the extensive wet-lab training, she developed her key research interests in cancer biology and cancer treatment. To better understand the life cycle of human cancers, she continued her cancer research to investigate the cellular, morphological, and molecular features of multiple types of cancers using histology, genomics, cell culture, and pre-clinical animal models during her postdoc research training. She also studied pioneering imaging technologies such as spatial transcriptomics and highly multiplexed tissue imaging and to construct imaging atlas for human cancers and organs.
Dr. Chen also received Medical degrees from Chongqing Medical University and Peking University in mainland China, and completed her otolaryngology residency training from Peking University First Hospital. Her integrated experience from both clinics and benches has shaped her pathway to understand cancers and benefit cancer patients as a physician-scientist. Her major research areas include studying the mechanisms that promote tumor initiation, progression and metastasis. Specifically, she is most interested in integrating powerful research approaches such as histology, genomics, cell culture, and pre-clinical animal models to investigate the functional roles of genes, molecules, and cells that promote cancer initiation, progression and metastasis; 2D and 3D imaging atlas construction of human cancers and organs using spatial transcriptomics, multiplex imaging and light sheet microscopy; and improved therapeutic options for cancer patients using various pre-clinical in vitro and in vivo models.