Feifei Zhang-上海市免疫学研究所

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Name:Feifei Zhang
Office Location:280 South Chongqing Road, Room XXXX, West #5 Building, Shanghai, China 200025
Telephone:86-21-63846383-776XXX
Email: feifei.zhang@sjtu.edu.cn

Education and Career

2026–Present，Professor/Principal Investigator, Shanghai Institute of Immunology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine

2019–2026，Postdoctoral associate, Yale University

2015–2019，Ph.D., The University of Hong Kong

2011–2015，M.Phil., Shanghai Jiao Tong University

2007–2011，B.S., Shandong Normal University

Research Interests

Cancer immunotherapies, including immune checkpoint blockade and cell therapies, have fundamentally benefit cancer treatment. However, a substantial proportion of patients either fail to respond or eventually develop acquired resistance and tumor recurrence after an initial therapeutic response. A major challenge lies in the complex and dynamic interactions between tumor cells and the immune system. Under the selective pressures imposed by tumor progression and therapeutic intervention, cancer cells can acquire new immune-evasive properties through cell-state transitions and phenotypic plasticity. Meanwhile, the tumor immune microenvironment undergoes adaptive remodeling, collectively shaping therapeutic response, resistance, metastasis, and disease recurrence.

The tumor microenvironment (TME) is not a static system defined by fixed cell types or molecular markers, but rather a dynamic immune ecosystem that continuously evolves across space and time. Tumor cells, immune cells, and stromal cells engage in persistent interactions and adopt distinct functional states, spatial organizations, and evolutionary trajectories during tumor progression and in response to therapeutic pressure. Conventional approaches focusing on individual genes, isolated cell populations, or static molecular features are therefore insufficient to fully capture the complex biological mechanisms underlying response and resistance to cancer immunotherapy. Understanding the TME from dynamic, spatial, and functional perspectives, and translating these insights into precise therapeutic interventions, is essential for developing the next generation of cancer immunotherapies.

Our laboratory focuses on therapy-driven tumor–immune interactions and the evolution of the tumor immune ecosystem. We integrate cutting-edge technologies, including genome editing, CRISPR functional screening, spatial perturbation multi-omics, single-cell multi-omics, AAV-mediated gene therapy, cell therapy, artificial intelligence, and computational biology. Through these approaches, we systematically investigate how tumor cells and the immune microenvironment dynamically adapt and evolve under immunotherapeutic pressure, with the goal of uncovering key molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying immune evasion, therapeutic resistance, metastasis, and recurrence. Building on these mechanistic insights, we aim to identify novel immunoregulatory targets and develop innovative strategies for precise reprogramming of the tumor immune microenvironment and next-generation cancer immunotherapy.

Major research directions:

1. Genome editing and CRISPR screening to dissect mechanisms of tumor immune evasion, metastasis, and recurrence

2. Spatially resolved CRISPR perturbation and multi-omic technologies to investigate how genetic perturbations reshape the TME, thereby defining the functional and evolutionary principles of tumor immune ecosystems.

3. In vivo genome-editing and gene-delivery strategies to precisely manipulate tumor and immune cell states, reprogram immunosuppressive microenvironments, and translate mechanistic discoveries into novel cancer immunotherapies.