Dr. Li Yi

Professor, Breast Center; Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology; Department of Molecular Virology & Microbiology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX US

Dr. Li completed both his Bachelor’s and Master’s studies in the Department of Animal Sciences and Veterinary Medicine at Jiangsu Agricultural College (now part of Yangzhou University).

In 1990, Li moved to the United States and worked for one year as a visiting scholar at the USDA Avian Diseases and Oncology Laboratory, East Lansing, Michigan. In 1991, he started his doctoral studies in the Department of Microbiology at Michigan State University and obtained his PhD in 1996. After a short postdoctoral study in the Department of Biochemistry at the same university, in 1997 he began his cancer research career as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute, NIH. In 2002, he was recruited to be on the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston. Dr. Li primarily studies breast cancer initiation and metastasis. He has made significant contributions to the field of breast cancer: his lab elucidated the ATM-p53-ARF-mediated anticancer barriers (apoptosis and senescence) during breast cancer initiation, identified a mammary biopotential progenitor population which is marked by cytokeratin 6, and discovered molecular mechanisms underlying the impact of pregnancy on breast cancer risk. Importantly, his lab succeeded in repositioning the FDA-approved anti-JAK inhibitor, ruxolitinib, for preventing breast cancer in preclinical mouse models, and a clinical trial based on this preclinical work is ongoing. As ruxolitinib is administered short-term or intermittently to induce apoptosis of precancerous cells, this treatment regimen overcomes a critical concern of currently used cancer prevention drugs (antiestrogens) which require prolonged treatment and can have significant side effects.

Further information：https://www.bcm.edu/research/faculty-labs/yi-li-lab