Starting point

Li still remembers how shocked and upset he was when his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005. Even though he was then a senior major in biology at Tsinghua University, he had no clue about the disease or understanding of the data and medical terms in his mother's test report.

It was the first time that Li recognized the dearth of credible information about cancer and its treatment online, and how many myths about the disease there were to mislead patients when making critical treatment decisions.

"My mother's cancer diagnosis has changed the course of my life. My family has encountered various challenges in her treatment and care, which makes me want to help more people learn about the disease in a scientific way," Li says. After breast-removal surgery, his mother underwent a course of chemotherapy.

"Her experience made me decide to study in the United States for its advanced biomedical research," Li remembers.

After graduating from Duke University with a PhD in molecular cancer biology in 2009, he worked in the US for Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research as a research investigator in the department of Oncology Drug Discovery, focusing on new target identification and validation until 2018.