Assistant Professor of Medicine (Research)

Overview

Xiaoqun Dong, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Liver Research Center, Rhode Island Hospital/Lifespan, Department of Medicine, The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and is a physician scientist.

She graduated from Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS) and Peking Union Medical College (PUMC), Tsinghua University, China. Dr. Dong was trained as postdoctoral fellow at the Department of GI Medical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.  She was awarded as “First Place for Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Award in Population/Patient-Oriented Research for Trainee Research Day” at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Xiaoqun received “AACR-FNAB Fellows Grant for Translational Pancreatic Cancer Research” at American Association for Cancer Research (international competition) and “Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation Award” at The University of Texas.

Her research is supported by NIH, AACR, institutions and Foundations. Dr. Dong has established a research platform based on the notion that embryonic development and differentiation share common signaling pathways with malignant transformation of the adult tissues, therefore, targeting those pathways may exert inhibitory effects on cancer initiation and progression. Her team has identified an oncofetal protein that promotes tumor development and progression in various types of cancer. Dr. Dong aims to identify new biomarkers for diagnosis, novel targeted therapy and comprehensive immunotherapy for multiple cancers.

Dr. Dong has more than 80 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals, such Journal of Clinical Oncology, Gastroenterology, Molecular Cancer, Hepatology, Journal of Hematology and Oncology, and Nature Communications. She has filed 2 (international) patents in biomedicine. She is serving on editorial boards of Cancer Letters, American Journal of Cancer Research and Scientific Reports. Dr. Dong is a scientific reviewer for many journals, such as Molecular Cancer, Autophagy, BBA - Reviews on Cancer, Theranostics, Cancer Research and Cancer.

She has mentored 19 trainees (undergraduate, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and visiting scholars).

Research Areas