Jianfeng Xu, MD, DrPH is a genomic translational researcher. He was trained in medicine, public health, and genetic epidemiology from Shanghai Medical University in China and the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health in the U.S.
Dr. Xu’s primary research interests are 1) discovery of genes that are associated with development and progression of diseases, and 2) translation of genomic findings for targeted prevention, screening, and treatment of diseases. Dr. Xu has been a principal investigator for dozens of grants in the U.S. and in China. He and his colleagues discovered multiple genes for cancer and other diseases and published over 400 papers in high impact journals including Science, Nature Genetics, Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Xu developed a genetic risk score (GRS) to measure the cumulative effect of multiple risk-associated variants on disease risk. Since published the GRS method and its application in prostate cancer 10 years ago in the New England Journal of Medicine, he has been working continuously and persistently to improve the GRS method. Currently, the GRS method has been extended to other cancers and diseases to develop personalized disease prevention and early intervention (screening).