Our research focus

The primary focus of the Li Lab is on assessing the performance of next-generation sequencing techniques in accurate genome/epigenome/transcriptome profiling and understanding the clinical and functional role of epigenome heterogeneity in the cancer evolution. The Li laboratory utilizes computational and sequencing methodologies to identify and characterize the essential epigenetic lesions that guide cancer cells to evolve and escape from therapy. Our research interest is to understand the inner workings of cancer cells – the genetic and epigenetic heterogeneity that drive cancer initiation and progression. Specifically, the research involves (1) determining the drivers of epigenetic heterogeneity; (2) evaluating the functional impact of the cross-talk among epigenetic modifications on transcriptome; (3) assessing epigenetic heterogeneity/subpopulations in treatment resistance.

Dr. Li has developed a series of computational methods and software for the epigenome sequencing data analysis, to comprehensively detect the significant DNA methylation aberration and epigenetic heterogeneity during disease progression. Dr. Li's work has helped to establish the first principles and metrics for examining changes in RNA splicing and expression profiling and set standards at the FDA for clinical-grade RNA-sequencing. Dr. Li further applied these approaches to study the epigenetic heterogeneity and dynamics using acute myeloid leukemia (AML) as a model. Dr. Li found that epigenetic allele burden was linked to inferior clinical outcome, and epigenetic dynamics was related to hypervariable transcriptional regulation and was divergent from the genetic burden.