Yun Rose Li, M.D., Ph.D.

Yun Rose Li, M.D., Ph.D., is an assistant professor and physician scientist in the Department of Radiation Oncology and Department of Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics at  City of Hope in Duarte, California. She also holds a joint appointment in the Division of Quantitative Medicine and Systems Biology at Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix. 

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After graduating summa cum laude from Duke University with a B.S. in chemistry in 2010, she went on to complete her M.D. and Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Her Ph.D. dissertation, for which Li was honored as the 2016 CHOP Distinguish Trainee, was focused on identifying common genetic risk factors underlying pediatric autoimmune diseases across a cohort of over 40,000 patients. In addition, she helped launch iGeneTRAiN — an international consortium across 22 research institutions from five continents that are applying next-generation DNA sequencing technologies to the identification of genetic markers for solid organ transplant rejection — and worked on developing proteomic platforms to study acute rejection in routine biopsy samples following cardiac transplantation as a visiting scholar at Stanford. 

During her residency and research fellowship at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), Li worked with Professor Allan Balmain, Ph.D., as a part of the ABR Holman Research Pathway Fellow. She is a member of the Mutographs Project, an international team funded by the Cancer Research UK Grand Challenge Grant, which is pioneering the use of mutational patterns from cancer genomes to identify the etiology of human cancers of unknown etiologies. Her particular focus was on the role of lifestyle risk factors such as obesity, high-fat diet and chronic inflammation. During her clinical training at UCSF, she was mentored by world-recognized experts in genitourinary radiation oncology including Felix Feng, M.D., and Mack Roach, M.D. For her research projects, she was awarded the NRG/RTOG New Investigator Award in 2019. In addition, Li is interested in improving the quality of life and access to precision medicine for patients with advanced and metastatic cancer. She has received several grants from UCSF to develop a Phase 1 trial to improve patient access to care and to identify the barriers to early palliative care referrals for patients with metastatic cancer. 

As a physician-scientist at City of Hope, she applies a combination of state-of-the-art computational biology and molecular biology approaches to better understand the dual role of oxidative stress and inflammation in cancer risk and treatment response. Her work lies at the interface between cancer genomics, metabolism and immunology, with a goal of understanding the mechanisms underlying metabolic modulation of normal tissue and cancer cell inflammatory response, and with an eventual goal of applying these principles to improving the therapeutic efficacy of radiation therapy while also reducing treatment toxicity. Her clinical expertise and focus are on patients with prostate, bladder, renal, testicular and colorectal cancers. She will be leading a Phase 2 clinical trial to test the tolerability and efficacy of using intermittent fasting to mitigate the toxicity of pelvic radiotherapy and potentially improve tumor response. 

Li's work has resulted in first-author publications in Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, and Science Signaling as well as over 60 co-authored manuscripts in such journals as Nature, Science, American Journal of Human Genetics, Neurology, Nature Neuroscience, and the Lancet, as well as a number of patents. She has won research awards and given talks at the American Society for Clinical Oncology, American Society for Radiation Oncology, the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium/American Association for Cancer Research and Human Genome Meeting. Li is the recipient of a number of grants including National Institutes of Health predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships, the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans and the Junior Investigator Pilot Grant at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Her work at the City of Hope is funded by an NIH K12 career development award as well as industry-sponsored awards. 

Outside of work, Li has served in advisory and consulting roles for health care, biomedical and IT startups and organizations, including Shearwater International, BreakOut Labs, DreamIt Venture Healthcare Program, and CrowdMed. She is a strong advocate for diversity and reducing burnout in medicine. She has served previously as a member of the resident committee of the American College for Radiation Oncology (ACRO), UCSF Cancer Center Committee, and co-chair of the UCSF Resident and Fellows Council Committee. She presently is a part of the ACRO New Practitioners Committee and an advisory member to the American Society for Cell Biology’s Programming Taskforce.  

In her free time, Li enjoys spending time with family, writing poetry, playing the piano, snowboarding, surfing, horseback riding and traveling the world.  

• 2019, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Boehringer Fellowship in Single Cell Genomics, Heidelberg, Germ

• 2019, NRG Oncology (National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project, the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group, and the Gynecologic Oncology Group, New Investigator Award

• 2018, NIH/University of California San Francisco, CTSI Postdoctoral Training Award (Offered)

• 2017-2018, University of California San Francisco, Innovation Accelerator Grant, CTSI, PI, Expediting palliative care referrals for patients with advanced/metastatic breast cancer using patient-reported outcomes

• 2016, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Distinguished Research Trainee Award

• 2016, Russell J. Stumacher, MD Memorial Prize (Penn), Outstanding contribution to medical humanities

• 2015-2016, American Association for the Adv of Science Emerging Leaders in Science & Society, Fellow

• 2015-2016, Paul Ambrose Scholar, Association for Prevention Teaching and Research

• 2014-2016, National Institutes of Health F30 Predoctoral Award

• 2014-2015, American Association of University Women PhD Dissertation Fellowship (Offered)

• 2014, American Society of Clinical Oncology, Merit Research Travel Award

• 2013, Genetics of Complex Disease, Graduate Student Scholarship

• 2012-2014, Paul and Daisy Soros Foundation, Fellowship for New Americans

• 2012-2014, American Heart Association Predoctoral Training Grant (Offered)

• 2010, Duke Faculty Council Faculty-Scholar Award

• ABR
• ABS
• ASTRO ACRO
• AMA
• ASCB
• ASCO
• AACR
• American Physician-Scientist Association
• American Association for Women Radiologists
• American Association of University Women
• ASHG

• Mercier, B.D.; Tizpa, E.; Philip, E.J.; Feng, Q.; Huang, Z.; Thomas, R.M.; Pal, S.K.; Dorff, T.B.; Li, Y.R. Dietary Interventions in Cancer Treatment and Response: A Comprehensive Review. Cancers 2022, 14, 5149. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36291933/ 
• Li J, Li YR, Glessner JT, Yang J, March ME, Kao C, Vaccaro CN, Bradfield JP, Li J, Mentch FD, Qu HQ, Qi X, Chang X, Hou C, Abrams DJ, Qiu H, Wei Z, Connolly JJ, Wang F, Snyder J, Flatø B, Thompson SD, Langefeld CD, Lie BA, Munro JE, Wise C, Sleiman PMA, Hakonarson H. Identification of Novel Loci Shared by Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis Subtypes Through Integrative Genetic Analysis. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2022 Aug;74(8):1420-1429. doi: 10.1002/art.42129. Epub 2022 Jul 15. PMID: 35347896; PMCID: PMC9542075.
  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35347896/ 
• Piening BD, Dowdell AK, Zhang M, Loza BL, Walls D, Gao H, Mohebnasab M, Li YR, Elftmann E, Wei E, Gandla D, Lad H, Chaib H, Sweitzer NK, Deng M, Pereira AC, Cadeiras M, Shaked A, Snyder MP, Keating BJ. Whole transcriptome profiling of prospective endomyocardial biopsies reveals prognostic and diagnostic signatures of cardiac allograft rejection. J Heart Lung Transplant. 2022 Jun;41(6):840-848. doi: 10.1016/j.healun.2022.01.1377. Epub 2022 Feb 3. PMID: 35317953; PMCID: PMC9133065.
  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35317953/ 
• Zhao D, Kim DY, Chen P, Yu P, Ho S, Cheng SW, Zhao C, Guo JA, Li YR. Pan-Cancer Survival Classification With Clinicopathological and Targeted Gene Expression Features. Cancer Inform. 2021 Jul 28;20:11769351211035137. doi: 10.1177/11769351211035137. PMID: 34376966; PMCID: PMC8330450. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34376966/ 
• Islam SMA, Díaz-Gay M, Wu Y, Barnes M, Vangara R, Bergstrom EN, He Y, Vella M, Wang J, Teague JW, Clapham P, Moody S, Senkin S, Li YR, Riva L, Zhang T, Gruber AJ, Steele CD, Otlu B, Khandekar A, Abbasi A, Humphreys L, Syulyukina N, Brady SW, Alexandrov BS, Pillay N, Zhang J, Adams DJ, Martincorena I, Wedge DC, Landi MT, Brennan P, Stratton MR, Rozen SG, Alexandrov LB. Uncovering novel mutational signatures by de novo extraction with SigProfilerExtractor. Cell Genom. 2022 Nov 9;2(11):None. doi: 10.1016/j.xgen.2022.100179. PMID: 36388765; PMCID: PMC9646490. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36388765/ 
• Parenti I, Mallozzi MB, Hüning I, Gervasini C, Kuechler A, Agolini E, Albrecht B, Baquero-Montoya C, Bohring A, Bramswig NC, Busche A, Dalski A, Guo Y, Hanker B, Hellenbroich Y, Horn D, Innes AM, Leoni C, Li YR, Lynch SA, Mariani M, Medne L, Mikat B, Milani D, Onesimo R, Ortiz-Gonzalez X, Prott EC, Reutter H, Rossier E, Selicorni A, Wieacker P, Wilkens A, Wieczorek D, Zackai EH, Zampino G, Zirn B, Hakonarson H, Deardorff MA, Gillessen-Kaesbach G, Kaiser FJ. ANKRD11 variants: KBG syndrome and beyond. Clin Genet. 2021 Aug;100(2):187-200. doi: 10.1111/cge.13977. Epub 2021 May 14. PMID: 33955014.
  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33955014/ 
• Riva L, Pandiri AR, Li YR, Droop A, Hewinson J, Quail MA, Iyer V, Shepherd R, Herbert RA, Campbell PJ, Sills RC, Alexandrov LB, Balmain A, Adams DJ. The mutational signature profile of known and suspected human carcinogens in mice. Nat Genet. 2020 Nov;52(11):1189-1197. doi: 10.1038/s41588-020-0692-4. Epub 2020 Sep 28. PMID: 32989322; PMCID: PMC7610456.
  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32989322/ 
• Rose Li Y, Halliwill KD, Adams CJ, Iyer V, Riva L, Mamunur R, Jen KY, Del Rosario R, Fredlund E, Hirst G, Alexandrov LB, Adams D, Balmain A. Mutational signatures in tumours induced by high and low energy radiation in Trp53 deficient mice. Nat Commun. 2020 Jan 20;11(1):394. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-14261-4. PMID: 31959748; PMCID: PMC6971050.
  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31959748/ 
• Li YR, Glessner JT, Coe BP, Li J, Mohebnasab M, Chang X, Connolly J, Kao C, Wei Z, Bradfield J, Kim C, Hou C, Khan M, Mentch F, Qiu H, Bakay M, Cardinale C, Lemma M, Abrams D, Bridglall-Jhingoor A, Behr M, Harrison S, Otieno G, Thomas A, Wang F, Chiavacci R, Wu L, Hadley D, Goldmuntz E, Elia J, Maris J, Grundmeier R, Devoto M, Keating B, March M, Pellagrino R, Grant SFA, Sleiman PMA, Li M, Eichler EE, Hakonarson H. Rare copy number variants in over 100,000 European ancestry subjects reveal multiple disease associations. Nat Commun. 2020 Jan 14;11(1):255. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-13624-1. PMID: 31937769; PMCID: PMC6959272.
  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31937769/ 
• Li YR*, Chen W*... Roach M. Stereotactic body radiotherapy and high-dose rate brachytherapy boost in combination with intensity modulated radiotherapy for localized prostate cancer: a single-institution propensity score matched analysis. (Submitted). *Equal contribution
• Li YR, Golden EB. Radiation Therapy and Checkpoint Inhibitors in Older Patients with Metastatic Non- Small Cell Lung Cancer. Radiotherapy and Oncology. (In revision).
• Riva L*, Pandiri A*, Li YR* ... Balmain, A, Adams, D. The mutational landscape of known and suspected human carcinogens in mice. Nature Genetics. 2020 (Accepted). *Equal contribution
• Han H, Li YR, Roach M, Aggarwal, R. Dramatic response to combination pembrolizumab and radiation in metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer. Ther. Adv. In Med On. 2020 (In Press)
• Li YR, Gottschalk AR, Roach M. Radiotherapy of Urologic Tumors. In: McAninch JW, Lue TF, eds. Smith & Tanagho’s General Urology. 19th ed. Lange; 2020.
• Li YR, Halliwill K, Adams C, Iyer V ... Adams D, Balmain, Mutational signatures in tumours induced by high and low energy radiation in Trp53 deficient mice. Nature Communications. 2020.
• Li YR., Glessner JT ...Hakonarson, H. Rare Copy Number Variants in 100,000 Subjects Reveal Novel Disease Associations. In Press. Nature Communications. 2020
• Li YR, Roach M. Stampede to Cure. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2019 06 01; 104(2):264
• Li YR, Roach M. Re: Identifying the Optimal Candidate for Salvage Lymph Node Dissection for Nodal Recurrence of Prostate Cancer: Results from a Large, Multi-institutional Analysis. Eur Urol. 2019 Dec 12.
• Li YR, Ro V, Steel L, Carrigan E, Nguyen J, Williams A, et al. Impact of long-term lipid-lowering therapy on clinical outcomes in breast cancer. Breast Cancer Res Treat 2019;176:669–77.
• H Hakonarson, Li YR and Keating B. Compositions and methods for use in combination for the treatment and diagnosis of autoimmune diseases. PCT/US2016/047857. Patented: 2019-08-2
• Matsunami H and Li YR. Compositions and Methods for Enhancing Odorant Receptor Activity. PCT/US2010/059093. Patented: 2018-09-11
• Plikus MV, Guerrero-Juarez CF, Ito M, Li YR, et al. Regeneration of fat cells from myofibroblasts during wound healing. Science (80- ). 2017;355(6326):748-752.
• Li YR, van Setten J, Verma SS, et al. Concept and design of a genome-wide association genotyping array tailored for transplantation-specific studies. Genome Medicine. 2015;7(1):90.
• Li YR, Zhao SD, Li J, et al. Genetic sharing and heritability of paediatric age of onset autoimmune diseases. Nature Communications. 2015;6:8442.
• Li YR, Li J, Zhao SD, et al. Meta-analysis of shared genetic architecture across ten pediatric autoimmune diseases. Nature Medicine. 2015.
• Li YR*, Jiang Y*, Tian H, Ma M, Matsunami H. Muscarinic acetylcholine receptor M3 modulates odorant receptor activity via inhibition of β-arrestin-2 recruitment. Nature Communications. 2015;6:6448.
• Li YR, Matsunami H. Unfolding the mystery of olfactory receptor gene expression. Dev Cell. 2013;27(2):1-2.
• Mainland JD, Keller A, Li YR ... Matsunami H. The missense of smell: functional variability in the human odorant receptor repertoire. Nature Neuroscience. 2013;17(1):114-20.
• Li YR, King OD, Shorter J, Gitler AD. Stress granules as crucibles of ALS pathogenesis. Journal of Cell Biology. 2013;201(3):361-72.