Jianjun Zhang, MD, PhD

Jianjun Zhang, MD & PhD, is a thoracic medical oncologist at MD Anderson Cancer Center. His research has focused on elucidating the mechanisms and clinical implications of tumor heterogeneity; the impact of cancer molecular features on host anti-tumor immune surveillance during cancer evolution with or without anti-tumor therapy. His group has led a series of studies on the genomic, transcriptomic, methylation, and immune intratumor heterogeneity of lung cancers and demonstrated that complex molecular heterogeneity is associated with impaired T cell response and inferior survival of lung cancer patients.

His group has also made critical contributions to understand the molecular/immune evolution during early lung carcinogenesis. He published over 150 peer-reviewed papers in high-impact journals including Nature, Science, Nature Methods, Nature Biotechnology, Lancet Oncology, Cancer Discovery, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Nature Communications etc. More importantly, these pioneering studies have led to the development of two unique clinical trials targeting tumor immune microenvironment for lung cancer prevention: IMPRINT-Lung and Can-Prevent-Lung.