Wei Li, PhD, Speaker

Dr Wei Li obtained her PhD degree from University of East Anglia in Biochemistry, focused on protein engineering and protein-protein recognition. She subsequently undertook postdoctoral research with Prof Jim Huntington at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, applying structural biology and protein crystallography to study thrombin inhibition by serine protease inhibitors (SERPINs) in the blood coagulation cascade. In 2010, she took up a British Heart Foundation Lectureship position at the Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge, and started working in the TGF-b/BMP field. Alongside Prof Nick Morrell, she has focused on the role and regulation of BMP signalling in pulmonary arterial hypertension. She is a co-founder of Morphogen-IX, a Cambridge University spin-out company which is developing a novel PAH therapy using BMP9-based molecules. She was awarded British Heart Foundation Senior Basic Science Research Fellow in 2020 and became a Principal Investigator at the Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge.