Zejuan Li, MD, PhD, serves as the Associate Medical Director of the Houston Methodist Hospital Molecular Diagnostic Laboratory and is an Associate Professor of Pathology and Genomic Medicine at the Houston Methodist Academic Institute and Weill Cornell Medical College. Prior to joining Houston Methodist in 2018, Dr. Li was an Assistant Professor of Human Genetics and Assistant Director of the Molecular Diagnostic Laboratory at the University of Chicago. Dr. Li is board certified in Clinical Molecular Genetics by the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics.

Dr. Li’s research interest is in understanding the pathological mechanisms of leukemia and lymphoma development and the identification of biomarkers for the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment prediction of leukemia, lymphoma, and solid tumors. Her research has been published in high-impact journals, including Cancer Cell, the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Nature Communications, Blood, Leukemia, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Genome Research, and Cancer Research. Dr. Li has received awards and funding from the American Cancer Society, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation for Cancer Research.

Dr. Li’s clinical interest is in translating knowledge from basic research to clinical diagnosis. In particular, Dr. Li is interested in developing and implementing cutting-edge technologies to incorporate advanced sequencing platforms, materials, and techniques to improve the genetic and genomic services available to patients. Dr. Li has led the validation and implementation of next-generation sequencing panels and clinical exome sequencing for hereditary cancers and tumors.

Dr. Li serves on the editorial boards of several journals and is an active member of the Association for Molecular Pathology, the American College of Medical Genetics, and the American Society of Hematology. She also serves on the ClinGen Myeloid Malignancy Variant Curation Expert Panel.

Dr. Li’s laboratory research focuses on two areas. One is the discovery of novel genetic and epigenetic biomarkers for the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of cancer patients. The other is the delineation of the underlying pathological mechanisms of leukemia and lymphoma through in vitro and in vivo studies exploring the roles of protein-coding and non-coding genes.