Dr. Jessie Yanxiang Guo received her Bachelor of Medicine degree (equivalent of US M.D.) from Beijing Medical University, China. Then she joined the Institute of Basic Science of Medicine (Beijing, China), began her research work in the field of cancer immunology and received her Master of Medicine degree. She received a Ph.D. degree through the Department of Moclecular Cancer Biology and Pharmacology at Duke University under the supervision of Dr. Sally Kornbluth, where she received extensive training in biochemistry, cell cycle, cell death and cancer biology.
As a postdoc fellow, Dr. Guo joined the laboratory of Dr. Eileen White at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and moved into the emerging fields of autophagy and cancer metabolism by using genetically engineered mouse models for human cancers and state-of-the-art metabolomics. She discovered that Ras activation upregulates autophagy and autophagy is required to maintain mitochondrial function to support Kras-driven lung tumor growth by recycling metabolites.
Currently, Dr. Guo is a Tenured Associate Professor in the Division of Medical Oncology, Department of Medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and a Resident Member at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey. Her general research interests are to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of tumorigenesis and identify and target potential metabolic vulnerabilities in Ras-driven cancers to improve cancer therapy. She has been funded by National Institutes of Health (NIH).