Lei Zheng, MD, PhD

Director
2022 - 2024

Lei Zheng, MD, PhD is a Professor of Oncology and Surgery in the Gastrointestinal Oncology Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and lead a large translational program that focuses on the preclinical and clinical development of novel vaccine- and antibody-based rational combination immunotherapy for gastrointestinal cancers at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins. He is Director of the Pancreatic Cancer Precision Medicine Center of Excellence at Johns Hopkins (https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/inhealth/precision-medicine-centers/pancreatic-cancer/) and Director of the Multidisciplinary Hepato-Panreato-Biliary Research Laboratory.  His clinical work is focused on multidisciplinary management for pancreatic cancer, bile duct cancer, liver metastases, and gastric cancer. In addition, he is a lead researcher in the group of Johns Hopkins Cancer Center’s physician scientists who have developed the pancreatic cancer GVAX vaccine and are currently leading nine investigator-initiated clinical trials of checkpoint inhibitor-based combination immunotherapy.  More recently, his laboratory started to develop neoantigen-based vaccines and nanoparticle based adjuvant systems.  He has also applied his knowledge gained from pancreatic cancer immune-based therapies to the development of a colorectal cancer vaccine and to the development of immunotherapy for bile duct cancer. He is affiliated with the Tumor Immunology Program as a laboratory investigator and possesses a large clinical trial associated biospecimen bank.  His primary laboratory research focus is on the identification of new targets for pancreatic cancer therapies by dissecting tumor microenvironment of pancreatic cancer.

Since 2013, he has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers and given more than 30 plenary and keynote speeches in national and international symposia. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Annals of Pancreatic Cancer. He is serving serve as a Councillor for Pancreatic Disorders (PAN) section of the American Gatroenterological Association Institute Council, a Member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology Grant Selection Committee and Education Committee, and a Member of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Program Committee. He is also chairing the China Regional Advisory Group for the AACR International Affair Committee.