Li Ding

Li Ding
Alma mater	University of Utah
Scientific career
Thesis	The molecular cloning, characterization, and regulation of diacylglycerol kinases (1998)
Website	dinglab.wustl.edu

Li Ding is the David English Smith Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Washington University. She is known for the development of multiple computational tools now commonly used in cancer biology research, including VarScan,^[1] HotSpot3D,^[2] and BreakDancer.^[3]

Education

Ding obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Fudan University in 1991. She moved to the United States and completed her Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1998 at University of Utah. She did her post-doctoral research in Stanford University from 1998 until 2000. She worked at Incyte Genomics for two years before joining the Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis in 2002.^[4] As of 2023, she is the David English Smith Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis.^[5]

Research

Ding is known for her work in using computational tools in cancer research and has collaborated frequently with David Fenyő, Timothy J. Ley, Matthew Meyerson, and Michael Christopher Wendl. Her research has identified genes^[6] and gene mutations that play a role in cancer.^[7]

References

1. Koboldt, DC, et al. (2012). "VarScan 2: somatic mutation and copy number alteration discovery in cancer by exome sequencing". Genome Research. 22 (3): 568–576. doi:10.1101/gr.129684.111. PMC 3290792. PMID 22300766.
2. Niu, B, et al. (2016). "Protein-structure-guided discovery of functional mutations across 19 cancer types". Nature Genetics. 48 (8): 827–837. doi:10.1038/ng.3586. PMC 5315576. PMID 27294619.
3. Chen, K, et al. (2009). "BreakDancer: an algorithm for high-resolution mapping of genomic structural variation". Nature Methods. 6 (9): 677–681. doi:10.1038/nmeth.1363. PMC 3661775. PMID 19668202.
4. "Li Ding, PhD - Biosketch | Washington University in St. Louis". oncology.wustl.edu. Retrieved 2023-05-21.
5. "People". Ding Lab. Retrieved 2023-03-28.
6. Matthews-King, Alex (April 5, 2018). "Major breakthrough in cancer care as gene map paves way for new treatments". The Independent (Online); London London: Independent Digital News & Media – via Proquest.
7. Landgreth, Robert (2013-10-20). "A few mutations drive most cancers". The Olympian. pp. A17. Retrieved 2023-05-21.