Jenny J. Yang, Ph.D., is a trailblazing protein chemist whose work holds tremendous potential to advance medical imaging, improving early disease detection, diagnostic evaluation, and image-guided intervention.
She will join the UAB Division of Hematology and Oncology in the Department of Medicine. Dr. Yang is currently a Permanent Regents’ Professor (since 2016) and Distinguished University Scholar (since 2013) in the Department of Chemistry, at Georgia State University. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, Director of Advanced Translational Imaging Facility, Associate Director of the Center for Diagnostics and Therapeutics at Georgia State University, Founding President of Atlanta Translational Imaging Consortium, and a Founder and President of InLighta Biosciences.
Dr. Yang’s current work involves expanding the development of targeted contrast agents, calcium sensors, and therapeutics, for clinical applications of human diseases. She is interested in translation of bench-top research to bed-side disease diagnostics, treatment drugs with broad impact on diseases including cancers, chronic liver, lung, kidney, CNS diseases, and cardiovascular diseases.
Dr. Yang currently has four major grant applications pending review, representing new directions to move preclinical protein MRI contrast agents to clinical trials, develop PET agents, and investigate calcium signaling. With UAB and other centers, she plans to lead large grant applications such as PO1 or Spore P50, and U01, directed towards clinical trials for early detections of liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, prostate cancer, breast and liver metastasis; and liver, lung, cardiac, and kidney fibrosis. She will also develop PET imaging agents and theranostic agents for chronic diseases and image guided intervention with Dr. Junjian Huang and others.
Dr. Yang will also lead grant applications for monitoring treatment effect and facilitating drug discovery for multiple diseases. The exciting discovery of protein contrast agents that bind to calcium (ProCAs) and their unique capability to specifically target disease molecular biomarkers in the tumor microenvironment, and our novel calcium sensors capable of capturing rapid dynamics and pathway-specific alterations of calcium signaling, will position us to lead or collaborate on many grant applications in basic and translational research from many funding sources and foundations.