Hangwen Li ,

Ph.D. Graduate Student

Born in Henan province, China, Hangwen accepted his medical training in Medical School of Zhengzhou University and earned his Bachelor of Medicine in 1996. Then he served as an Official at the Department of Public Health for 4 years. He was still very interested in pursuing further education in science,  so he then entered the Graduate School of Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) in 2000. At CDC of China, his field of study was in nutrition and human diseases. After he earned his Master degree of Medicine and Nutritional Science, he joined the Ph.D. program at The University of Texas at Austin in 2003. When he finished his first stage of study in nutrition, Hangwen realized that he was more interested in cancer research, so he then joined the Tang’s lab in June of 2005. As a Ph.D. graduate student working in the Tang lab, Hangwen’s research mainly focuses on Cancer Stem Cells( CSCs) and metastasis in human prostate cancer. His preliminary work provided some evidence that there are some stem like cells (tumor initiating cells) in human prostate carcinoma cells called Holoclones. Furthermore, by using xenograft metastasis models and microarray techniques, his work on prostate cancer metastasis may reveal some important findings between metastatic CSCs and metastasis, as well as finding some diagnosis and prognostic markers for human prostate carcinoma metastasis.

    In addition to a die hard fan of science, Hangwen is also a die hard sport lover. In his spare time, he enjoys playing sports like basketball, soccer and flag-football. His life's motto is “ Work hard and play hard”. His dream is that he still could play B-ball and soccer until over 40-50 years old (like his boss, Dean) Haha, let’s see!

Hangwen is currently supported by a DOD Pre-Doctoral Fellowship.