Li (helen) Zhang

Biography

 Dr. Zhang is the Senior Vice President of CBMG Technology and Manufacturing. She has more than 30 years’ research experience related to tissue, cellular and molecular biology. After graduating from medical school in 1982, Dr Zhang worked for over 10 years as a pathologist in clinical and instructional capacities. She began her cell and gene studies in 1993 at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in Berlin, Germany. She became the first Asian research scientist to be awarded the “Best Research Scientist Fellowship” at MDC. Her research of gene therapy for the treatment of brain tumor was published as a cover story at “Gene Therapy”.

Research Interest

Beginning in 1998, Dr. Zhang worked for thirteen years in stem cell (embryonic, fetus and adult) research and gene/cell therapy research at Harvard Medical School. In September 2001, Dr. Zhang was invited by the International Neurosurgery Congress in Sydney to make a presentation about her study on primary isolating, culturing and differentiation of adult neural stem cells. As the associate director of cGMP and laboratory operations at the Harvard Gene Therapy Initiative, Dr. Zhang successfully led a team in providing clinical grade cell therapy and gene therapy products for clinical trials (in accordance with FDA standards) to organizations such as the Harvard Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), the French company Genethon, and the U.S Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA). Her team has also provided thousands of cell/gene therapy products to research groups at Harvard and other Ivy League schools for study and research purposes.