Department: Neurosurgery

W

Wang, Xinnan

Academic Appointments Assistant Professor, Neurosurgery
Member, Bio-X

Research Interest
Mitochondria move and undergo fission and fusion in all eukaryotic cells. The accurate allocation of mitochondria in neurons is particularly critical due to the significance of mitochondria for ATP supply, Ca++ homeostasis and apoptosis and the importance of these functions to the distal extremities of neurons. In addition, defective mitochondria, which can be highly deleterious to a cell because of their output of reactive oxygen species, need to be repaired by fusing with healthy mitochondria..
Wong, Albert

Academic Appointments Professor, Neurosurgery
Member, Stanford Cancer Institute

Research Interest
Our goal is to define targets for cancer therapeutics by identifying alterations in signal transduction proteins. We first identified a naturally occurring mutant EGF receptor (EGFRvIII) and then delineated its unique signal transduction pathway. This work led to the identification of Gab1 followed by the discovery that JNK is constitutively active in tumors. We intiated using altered proteins as the target for vaccination, where an EGFRvIII based vaccine appears to be highly effective.