Mansi: So, just to get started with, if you can tell us something about your background and your journey so far in STEM field. Okay.
Dr. Jing Wang: So I finished my PhD outside the us. I finished it in China, and then I came to the US as a postdoc. First at Duke University and then in the University of Michigan.
And then I came here as an assistant professor in 2022. So I, my background is about medical engineering and then I like, like cancer study. And then I'm interested in this biology thing and I also want to create something that I use for and has translational value. That's why I choose this major.
And then I found Iowa State University have a plan to start. Its like B m E department. And that's a great opportunity for B M E engineers. That's why I end up here. Yeah.
Mansi: Okay, so BME engineers is biomedical engineers, if I'm not
Dr. Jing Wang: wrong, right? Yeah, biomedical
Mansi: engineering. Okay. Okay, great. So as you know more about your background also if you would like to share something about being a Asian women faculty in STEM field or STEM area overall throughout your journey were there any challenges that you faced?
Dr. Jing Wang: Your, yeah, for female scientists, there are always a lot of like more family responsibility, I would say. For example, like myself, I have a, a six year old boy, and then of course my husband is also a faculty, but Most of time, I would say like women have to take more like responsibility or more job to take care of the family, the kids, and then the parents.
That's why I just find sometimes this this family work balance seems more, seems like a more important topic for female, especially those female who also work. Yeah, I think that's that's the. Big challenge for the famous female scientist here. But fortunately there's a lot of like policies or, or some other benefits that may can help this female scientists to address this difficulties.
So we really appreciate that. So I have seen a lot of like successful female scientists or faculties in this field. So I don't think that will be like a big barrier for us. To establish a, a successful career here. But yes, of course, there's a lot of challenges. And then especially when you start collaboration, you will find it's still like a lot of like male scientists in this field.
But the organization also encourage more like collaboration with women, with minorities. So I think. I would say in B m E field, like it's quite common to see a lot of like female faculties here. So those are really some of them did very well. I think those they are my role models.
Okay.
Mansi: Yeah. That's, that's good to know. That's really good to know. So while you talked about how you came into this field and but were there any motivation behind you choosing this area?
Dr. Jing Wang: So my current research area is more like immunotherapy. Not just for cancer, but most of the part is for cancer therapy.
Before that my focus is more like nanotechnology and drug delivery for chemotherapy. It's also about cancer, but it's more like a traditional therapy method. So I would say I slightly changed the focus because My family members had like cancer a couple of years ago, and I just realized like there's a lot of, we are urgently, I mean, in clinic it's a, there's a urgent need of new therapy rather than there's traditional in traditional chemotherapy or radiotherapy.
Something like that because a lot of patients chemotherapy is not suitable for them. Chemotherapy usually is used for the patients that cannot have surgery or already have like distant metastasis, which means that the tumor has been, has migrated to other part of the body. So, and then Then I found like after my family member finish their, like, initial therapy or we can see primary therapy such as surgery.
There's no No therapy or no supplement or no medicine that can help them to boost their damaged like immune system and then prevent the recurrence or metastasis. I mean, after they finish the primary therapy, before the diagnosis, the the potential metastasis. There's no treatment in between, no drugs, no medicine.
There's a gap here. So, which really encouraged me to look at what can we do to like booster this their immune system, make them like be. Able to avoid the possible metastatic tumor growth. Otherwise, you're just waiting and then allowing this metastatic tumor to grow and then just use CT every year or every half year to diagnose like, oh, whether you are lucky or unlucky, but if we can give them some medicine.
Right after the primary therapy, just like, because cancer is a chronic disease for chronic disease, you always need to like like improve your immune system to boost it to like anti-tumor and then you can avoid this like metastatic tumor growth. Hmm. I wish, like in the future, after we develop more and more drugs that can help this Patients to control their immune system.
Then probably it will not be like a lottery thing to wait for the diagnosis. It will not be like, oh, I'm lucky this year I did not have like c su special cities. Suspicious not. Because everything should, should be under control. Yeah. That's just the motivation. I changed my focus from the previous, like chemotherapy to immunotherapy here.
Yeah. Some something like something happened like around me. Give me this motivation. Yeah. That's
Mansi: amazing. Thank you for sharing your story with us. That means a lot and I hope when students watch the, your video, your story, they get more inspired and work towards filling the gaps like you in medicine or V M E area.
So just moving on to the next question I know you talked about What you're doing right now, but are there any specific research work you did or any memorable accomplishment or contribution you would like to share with us? Oh,
Dr. Jing Wang: okay. So you know, it's really not easy to pick up a new research direction when you field, even though you have been in this big field for a lot of years.
So I actually spent like four. Years, like to get myself familiar with immunotherapy or the immunoregulation of cancer and the metastasis. Yeah. So this is the major part of my research work in the University of Michigan. And then Recently we have a publication in Nature Communications. And then in that paper we used some engineering tour, which is a scaffold to study the mechanism underlying, like breast cancer, lung metastasis.
Yeah. So over speaking from that research tour, we found that like for most of breast cancer patients were. In our study, we only look at the animals the breast cancer hosts. Hosts means like animal can be animal, can be patients. The breast cancer hosts, like their circulation system actually include both anti-tumor and pro tumor immune cells.
However, why some of the hosts develop like lung metastasis while the others they're fine. They, they just achieve long-term survival. So I know this is a miss in kine as well. So our study, just to reveal that, like for, because every person is different. We call it individual, right? For some patients, Because their primary tumor are kind of different, their lives aggressive and because their health immune system, which means the immune system they achieved when they are born, the immune system are more like pro-inflammatory or more potent.
So they are lungs kind of like develop a group of cytokines, cytokines, proteins. So, Enrich in their lung. And then because of this proteins, they can recruit, they can attract this anti-tumor immune cells to protect their lung. Even though the, the tumor cells has like reached the lung, this anti-tumor immune cells can also reach the lung and push the tumor cells not to grow.
However, in another group of like hosts they do not have this protective protein there because either because their immune system has been damaged very bad, or they have other disease that hurt their host immune system or their primary tumor are more aggressive because, you know, primary tumor we are.
Systematically change our immune system. So because the lung do not have this group of protective proteins. And then instead they attracted this pro tumor in immune cells, which will promote the tumor cell quickly to develop to a secondary tumor in the lung. So after we. We identify the phenomenon here.
So the next step we'll design some drugs that can allow our lungs to attract and accumulate this group of protective proteins. And then for those patients that are. Have high risk of lung metastasis properly, this targeted therapy will help them to achieve long-term survival. So that's just our recent research finding in terms of like breast cancer and then metastasis here.
Mansi: Okay. That's great. And you said this is published in nature Communication Journal?
Dr. Jing Wang: Yes, it's accepted. But it's in press right now. It's a quite new Quite a new research finding. Yeah.
Mansi: Okay. Well, that's good that we already got a glimpse of it here before it gets running. Mm-hmm. And once it's published published, I hope people and students get to know more about your research work.
But it sounds really interesting. I'm just taking all in because it's a lot of information and I'm just trying to remind myself all the biology classes I have taken so far and reminding myself, oh, this is what it is. So thank you so much for sharing your, your accomplishment and contribution. So in terms of just kind of going and changing the gears, what role has mentorship played in your in your journey, if it has at all?
If you want to talk about that. Oh, do you
Dr. Jing Wang: mean the mentor? You mean my postal or PhD advisor? Yes, yes. Yeah, those are very important. I mean I am very lucky. I always like encounter like very good mentors as a good mentor first. They should like give you, especially for postdoc advisor, a good mentor should give you like First scientific suggestion about your project because they know more than you.
That's, that's for sure. I think most mentor are quite clear about what they want when they recruit you to the group. But the second most one is like, they should give you like enough freedom to develop your idea, to bring up your different hypothesis because Postdoc are more like finished tr they have finished their education.
Mm-hmm. They're well trained, but probably it's a necessary step to be an independent researcher. Through this postdoctoral training. During this training, probably the postdoc already have a lot of like ideas about how to design a project, how to like how to bring up different hypothesis. So, I think a good mentor should always, like, encourage the, the postdoc, like to try their new ideas rather than telling them step by step what they want you to do.
I mean, that's more like a a way to train the young graduate students. Yeah. Not a postdoc. So I really appreciate that. My previous like postdoc advisor gave me a lot of like, freedom. In the space to develop my own idea, develop my own projects here, and then to try different things even though some of them were not quite successful.
But but overall it just to quickly help me to establish my independent researcher ability.
Mansi: Okay. That's that's good to hear because I see a lot of times people who are our students who are pursuing graduate studies or postdoc, often it gets out of the networking part. The mentorship part goes on the backseat, and you are just so focused on your research paper or the topic that we don't think that mentorship or networking is something you should always be involved in.
Dr. Jing Wang: Yeah, networking is also important, especially how to benefit from your advisor's networking. So I believe a lot of mentors or postdoc mentors, they wish or they hope they are postoc to become independent faculties in the future. And then My previous like post advisor, like try their best to support me, encourage me to be independent, so I appreciate that.
And then some other things as a post you should learn is like in addition to research how to like get your familiar with something like. That is not about research, but it's necessary to know as a faculty, such as this proposal funding application, and then conference like and then networking.
Many things. That is not about, or that is not closely related to your research topic, you should like, acquire this type of skills, like during the postdoc training. Yeah, and it also depends how much you can learn. It also depends on like how much your mentor would like to teach. Because some, a lot of them, like you probably if you mentor It's not interested in teaching you how to write a proposal, how to get involved in a proposal application.
Probably you'll not have like a lot of chance to learn this part from a senior professor. Yeah, that's quite important to be independent faculty at least in my opinion. Yep. Yep.
Mansi: Absolutely. Thank you so much for that insight and just to kind of wrap up in interest of time. Mm-hmm. Just to kind of wrap up the interview, based on your experience, what would be that one advice?
It can be more than one advice to the young aspiring Asian women entering stem. Any STEM field or specifically if you want to talk about biomedical engineering, that's fine too.
Dr. Jing Wang: I think biomedical engineer, I, I dunno. So I believe people who choose this field, they really, they're really interested in this field and I can see a lot of opportunities in academia and in industry.
Although probably the overall number of female scientists in this field is the last than the, than the mayor. I think there's a lot of women did very well in this field and then I don't think that's a minority for Asian women in this field. Yeah. So I think that's an encouraging thing.
Since they have been very successful, the future ones can also be very successful. Right. So so I just wanna say if you're interested in B M E just to jump into this field, you'll find a lot of things you do not have to worry too much about, like discrimination or something, or challenging. There's always solutions to tackle these problems.
Yeah. Yep.
Mansi: Yep. Thank you so much for having that positive note at the end. And then, so before we kind of parts our ways, I just wanted to, again, thank you for joining me today, signing up for this project. And I. Allowing me to interview you and getting more insights about your experience or contribution, and I hope I justify your contribution on the website that I'm working on.
But again, thank you so much Dr. Wong, for joining me. Oh, you're welcome. Okay, bye. Thank you. Gimme one second. Mm-hmm.