Dr Yihua Wang

I have a long-held interest in functional genomics and cell signalling and have published over 80 papers in peer-reviewed journals, including corresponding-authored Lancet Respir Med, eLife, Cell Death Differ, Autophagy, Journal of Infection and Cell Death Dis, and first-authored Nat Cell Biol and PNAS articles etc., with an H index of 33 (Google Scholar).

    After successful completion of MBBS in medicine and PhD in cell biology, I undertook postdoctoral training in Julian Downward’s CRUK Signal Transduction laboratory and Prof Xin Lu’s lab in Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research Oxford Branch. In 2016, I joined School of Biological Sciences (BioSci) in the University of Southampton (UoS) as Lecturer after being successful at a very competitive recruitment process. I have sought to identify research links in areas of strategic importance to the University and I recognised that lung diseases offered me this opportunity. My fundamental work on hypoxia, RAS signalling, regulators of epithelial polarity and on epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) is not only crucial for understanding diseases such as cancer, but for many other chronic diseases where epithelial dysfunction and fibrosis are evident. To make my current work distinct and competitive, it was immediately clear that my skills and experience were highly relevant to non-malignant lung disease, especially idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), which has a prognosis worse than many cancers. This allowed me to integrate with Southampton's internationally recognised ‘bench to bedside’ researchers in both cancer AND respiratory disease, and to rapidly establish a distinct niche for myself in UoS.