Medical Oncologist, Clinician Investigator, Department of Medical Oncology and Hematology, and Medicine, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre

Dr. Wang is an early-career researcher. He graduated with his MD/PhD, from the University of Toronto in 2018 and was certified as a medical oncologist in 2025.

His research project is entitled “Tracking the Glioblastoma Tumour Microenvironment to Unlock Precision Immunotherapy”.

He provided the following summary of his research project.

Glioblastoma is the most common and aggressive adult brain cancer, and current treatments rarely provide lasting control. Immunotherapy has transformed care in some cancers, but it has not yet helped most patients with glioblastoma.

One major reason may be that the tumour’s immune environment is not understood well enough, especially after standard treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy, when the tumour returns.

This project aims to better understand how glioblastoma interacts with the immune system and how that environment changes over time. They will study tumour samples and blood samples to identify patterns in the tumour microenvironment and develop a blood-based test that can track these changes without requiring repeated surgery.

They will also examine how treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation may reshape the tumour environment in ways that make immunotherapy less effective. The goal is to create new tools to better match patients to treatments and to guide the development of more effective immunotherapy strategies for glioblastoma. For patients, this research could lead to more personalized care, better monitoring of tumour biology through a simple non-invasive blood test, and ultimately new treatment approaches for a disease that urgently needs better options.

As the applicant and principal investigator, he will lead the overall design and execution of this project, including ethics and regulatory coordination. He developed the study concept and will oversee its major components, including characterization of the glioblastoma tumour microenvironment, development of the cfDNA-based biomarker approach, and analysis of treatment-related changes at recurrence.

He will also supervise research staff and trainees involved in the project, coordinate collaborations in immunophenotyping, plasma cfDNA analysis, and bioinformatics, and ensure that the work remains focused on clinically meaningful translational outcomes. His role will include guiding all core analyses, interpreting findings in the context of glioblastoma biology and immunotherapy resistance, and leading dissemination of results through abstracts, manuscripts, and future biomarker-driven clinical trial development.

Dr. Wang will collaborate with a multidisciplinary team on this project:

• Benjamin Haibe-Kains will contribute expertise in computational oncology and multimodal biomarker modelling.
• Pamela Ohashi will provide guidance in tumour immunology and interpretation of spectral flow immune profiling data.
• Scott Bratman (2024 Elevation Grant recipient, generously funded by Dunn with Cancer Event) will support the liquid biopsy components of the study, including circulating biomarker analyses.
• David Shultz and Michael Yan will contribute radiation oncology expertise, particularly in treatment response assessment and radiotherapy-related clinical interpretation.
• Paul Kongkham will provide neurosurgical input and support tissue acquisition, and Kieran Campbell will contribute expertise in single-cell and spatial omics analysis to help characterize the tumour microenvironment.