Difei Wang, PhD

Dr. Wang joined ICBI faculty in June 2012. His primary research areas of interest include computer-aided drug design, pharmacogenomics, next generation sequencing, nucleosome positioning, and nucleosome and chromatin structures.

Before joining ICBI, Dr. Wang had worked on DNA, nucleosome and chromatin structures at Laboratory of Cell Biology, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health for six years. He did his postdoctoral work at Walther Cancer Center, University of Notre Dame in the area of histone deacetylase inhibitor design.

Dr. Wang received his bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from East China University of Science and Technology, China; his master’s degree in Organic Chemistry from Nankai University, China; and his Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

He has published 16 peer-reviewed papers in international scientific journals. He has also served as a peer-reviewed for leading medicinal chemistry journals. 

Select Publications 

Wang, D. F.; Wiest, O. G.; Helquist, P.; Hsuan, H.; and Wiech, N. On the Function of 14 Å Cavity of HDLP: Implication for HDAC Inhibitor Design. J. Med. Chem. 47, 3409-3417, 2004.

Wang, D. F.; Helquist, P.; Wiech, N. L.; and Wiest, O. G. Towards Selective HDACs Inhibitors: Homology Modeling, Docking Study and Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Class I Human HDACs (HDAC1, HDAC2, HDAC3 and HDAC8). J. Med. Chem. 48, 6936-6947, 2005.

Wang, D. F. Computational Studies on the Histone Deacetylases and the Design of Selective Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors. Curr. Top. Med. Chem. 9, 241-256, 2009

Sahu, G.; Wang, D. F.; Chen, C. B.; Zhurkin, V. B.; Harrington, R. E.; Appella, E.; Hager, G. L. and Nagaich, A. K. P53 Binding to Nucleosomal DNA Depends on the Rotational Positioning of DNA Response Element. J. Biol. Chem. 285, 1321-1332, 2010.

Wang, D. F.; Ulyanov, N. B. and Zhurkin, V. B. Sequence-dependent ‘Kink-and-Slide’ Deformations of Nucleosomal DNA Facilitated by Histone Arginines Bound in the Minor Groove. J. Biomol. Struct. Dyn. 27, 843-859, 2010.