HPV Biology Program

HPV Biology Program

Hang Yuan, PhD
Associate Professor

Dr. Yuan serves as the Director of the HPV Biology Program within the CCR. He received his PhD from Wake Forest School of Medicine. He started his postdoctoral training at Georgetown University Medical Center in 1998. Currently, he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology. Dr. Yuan moved to Georgetown after the first-generation HPV vaccine was developed in Dr. Schlegel’s lab and became the group leader on vaccine development. His work, in collaboration with Bob Garcea at the University of Colorado, led to the second-generation cervical cancer vaccine, which can potentially cut production cost by 90%. This method led to a patent and it is hopeful that this second generation vaccine will be utilized in developing countries, where deaths from cervical cancer are most prevalent. Dr. Yuan successfully utilized conditionally reprogrammed cells to identify viral mutations in a rare case of HPV-induced lung tumors and used this to identify an effective therapy. The advance was seen as an exciting demonstration of the use of conditional reprogramming in personalized cancer medicine. His seminar presentation was awarded Geo von Krogh Prize by the Papillomavirus Society in the 27th International Papillomavirus Conference and Clinical Workshop (2011). The results were published on The New England Journal of Medicine in 2012, where Dr. Yuan was the first author.