About Dr John Lizhe Zhuang
-
Assistant Professor, Early Cancer Institute
I am an Assistant Professor at the Early Cancer Institute, University of Cambridge.
I completed My PhD at the University of Melbourne before joining Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald’s group at Cambridge in 2016. I was promoted to Assistant Professor in 2023, and my research focuses on understanding the development and progression of Barrett’s oesophagus and oesophageal adenocarcinoma.
My work combines patient-derived models with single-cell and spatial approaches to study the cellular origins, clonal evolution and tissue microenvironment of precancerous lesions. My research has contributed to defining the gastric origin and developmental programmes of Barrett’s oesophagus and upper gastrointestinal intestinal metaplasia, and I have led the development of functional patient-derived organoid platforms spanning normal tissue, precancer, dysplasia and early cancer. Since 2019, I have led a number of Cancer Research UK awards focused on developing organoid models and spatial omics approaches for early cancer research. I currently co-lead a Wellcome Discovery Award with Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald.
Research Interests
My research focuses on understanding how precancerous lesions develop and progress to cancer, and how this process might be detected earlier or intercepted. I use Barrett’s oesophagus and other upper gastrointestinal precancerous conditions as model systems to investigate how cell lineage, genetic alterations, clonal evolution and interactions with the tissue microenvironment influence cancer risk. My research develops patient-derived organoid and multicellular functional models and combines these with single-cell genomics, spatial transcriptomics and proteomics, and functional genomics. These approaches enable the reconstruction of precancer progression at cellular, clonal and spatial resolution, and the experimental investigation of mechanisms that drive the transition from normal tissue through precancerous states to invasive cancer. Ultimately, my research aims to translate this understanding of precancer biology into new approaches for cancer risk prediction and prevention, identifying high-risk cellular states and actionable biological pathways that could be targeted before invasive cancer develops.
Publications
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7924-8919
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=iHp_iDwAAAAJ&hl=en