University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Yi Fan, MD PhD, is currently an Associate Professor with tenure at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Dr. Fan obrained his PhD degree in Pathology from the Case Western Reserve University in 2009. After completion of his postdoc training at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Fan joined University of Pennsylvania's faculty in 2013.
The major goal of Dr. Fan's research is to develop new therapies in cancer and regenerative medicine by targeting the tissue microenvironment, with a focus on angiogenesis, immunotherapy, and glioma stem cells. His laboratory has recently uncovered endothelial cell plasticity-mediated mechanisms in cancer, providing unconventional insights into aberrant angiogenesis and therapy resistance (Huang et al, JCI 2016; Liu et al, Nature Comm 2018; Fan, Trends in Cancer 2019; Huang et al, Science Transl Med 2020). His group identifies an IL6-mediated mechanism that regulate macrophage immunity in glioma (Wang et al, Nature Comm 2018) as well as a Pak4-mediated pathway that controls CAR T cell infiltration into glioblastoma (Ma et al, Nature Cancer, in press). They have also revealed genetic mechanisms regulating therapy resistance in glioma stem cells and circulating glioma cells (Wang et al, JCI Insight 2018; Liu et al, Cancer Res 2018). Dr. Fan is a recipient of numerous awards including Judah Folk award (AACR, 2016) and Springer award (NAVBO, 2018).
