Bio
Dr. Cong is leading a group in the Department of Pathology and Genetics at Stanford School of Medicine to pursue novel technology for scalable genome editing and single-cell genomics, and accompanying computational approaches inspired by data science. His group has a focus on studying immunology in the context of cancer and neuroscience.
He obtained his BS with highest honor from Tsinghua University studying Electronic Engineering and then Biology, his Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School co-advised by Drs. Feng Zhang and George Church. He completed doctoral work primarily in Dr. Feng Zhang?s laboratory, where he published seminal studies on harnessing CRISPR/Cas9 for gene editing, including the most highly-cited paper in CRISPR field, with cumulative citation over 15,000 times. He has obtained over 20 issued patents as co-inventor, and his work led to one of the first FDA-approved clinical trials employing viral delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 for in vivo gene therapy. His later work applied single-cell RNA-seq to cancer drug discovery under Dr. Aviv Regev at the Broad Institute with Drs. Tyler Jacks and Vijay Kuchroo.
Dr. Cong was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) International Fellow, a Cancer Research Institute (CRI) Irvington Fellow, and was selected as Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list of young innovators, MIT TechReview TR35 China, and 2019 ?Top 10 under 40? by GEN (Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News).
Academic Appointments
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Assistant Professor, Pathology
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Assistant Professor, Genetics
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Member, Bio-X
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Member, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Honors & Awards
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Donald and Delia Baxter Foundation Faculty Scholar, Baxter Foundation (2019)
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CRI Irvington Fellow, Cancer Research Institute
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HHMI International Fellow, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations
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Genome Editing and New Investigator Committee Member, American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) (2019 - Present)
Professional Education
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PhD, Harvard University, Harvard Medical School., Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2014)
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LHB, Harvard Medical School., Certificate in Leder Human Biology and Translational Medicine
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B.S., Tsinghua University, Biological Sciences, Electronic Engineering (2009)
Community and International Work
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Neuro-engineering and Gene-editing., Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Topic
Advanced Techniques in Molecular Neuroscience
Partnering Organization(s)
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Location
International
Ongoing Project
Yes
Opportunities for Student Involvement
Yes
Patents
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Feng Zhang, Le Cong, Patrick Hsu, Fei Ann Ran. "United States Patent 8,906,616 Engineering of systems, methods and optimized guide compositions for sequence manipulation"
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Le Cong, Feng Zhang. "United States Patent 8,932,814 CRISPR-Cas nickase systems, methods and compositions for sequence manipulation in eukaryotes."
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Feng Zhang, LeCong, Randall Platt, Neville Sanjana, Fei Ann Ran. "United States Patent 8,993,233 Engineering and optimization of systems, methods and compositions for sequence manipulation with functional domains"
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Cong, Egloff, Garraway, Grandis, Lander, Stransky, Tward, Zhang.. "United States Patent 9,370,551. Compositions and methods of treating head and neck cancer."
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Le Cong, Feng Zhang, Patrick Hsu, Fei Ann Ran. "United StatesEngineering of systems, methods and optimized guide compositions for sequence manipulation."