Dr. Charles Wang lab’s long-term research interests are to investigate the genomic and epigenomic mechanisms of diseases and health by exploiting the cutting-edge innovative omics technologies and bioinformatic tools. Over the past 10 years, Dr. Wang lab’s research has focused on benchmarking genomics technologies and the related bioinformatics methods including RNA-seq, single-cell RNA-seq, whole-genome and whole-exome sequencing using reference samples, which has led to some major high impact publications in several prestigious journals such as Genome Biology, Nature Communications, Nature Biotechnology (NBT) including 3 NBT papers published in 2014 and 3 NBT papers published in 2021, respectively as Nature publishing special collections, both times with a cover image at the NBT.
Dr. Charles Wang's current research focuses on substance use disorders using prenatal exposure animal models to understand the genomic and epigenomic mechanisms underlying maternal drug exposure-induced abnormal brain development. Many cutting-edge genomic and epigenomic technologies are used including spatial genomics, scRNA-seq, snATAC-seq, single-cell DNA methylation and single-cell histone modifications. There are ample opportunities for doctoral thesis and postdoctoral research projects and for training in genomics, bioinformatics, systems biology, and neuroscience. The lab welcomes highly motivated graduate students, postdoctoral fellow and visiting scientist to join the research team.
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Lab News
- Dr. Charles Wang, MD, PhD, MPH, at Loma Linda University’s School of Medicine, won the 10x Genomics poster contest at the 2023 Society for Neuroscience (SfN) held on November 11-15th, 2023, in Washington D C with his entry, “Single-nucleus multiome and spatial transcriptomics reveal abnormal neural development in rat brain after prenatal e-cigarette exposure.”
- LLU Center for Genomics was awarded a large NIH U01 grant on substance abuse and animal genomics by NIH NIDA. April 10th, 2023, Loma Linda University researchers receive $5 million in grants for research projects.
- Dr. Charles Wang, MD, PhD, MPH, was invited to give a talk at the NIH NIDDK’s Healthy Tissue and Standards Virtual workshop on July 25th, 2022.
- Dr. Charles Wang, MD, PhD, MPH, was honored and recognized by the Precision Clinical Medicine of Oxford University Press & West China Hospital (2021 & 2022) and the MAQC Society (2021).
- Dr. Charles Wang of the LLU Basic Sciences Department and Dr. Hua Wang of the Department of Pediatrics received a GCAT grant in 2021 to apply RNA sequencing for undiagnosed genetic disorders with variant uncertain significance.
- LLU Center for Genomics Dr. Wang lab published three papers in Nature Biotechnology with a cover image in 2021 under the Sequencing Quality Control 2 consortium umbrella.
More Lab News
- Dr. Charles Wang was invited to give a talk in April 2021 on his multicenter single-cell RNA-seq paper published in Nature Biotechnology at the NCI’s Center for Biomedical Informatics & Information Technologies on Cancer Data Science.
- Dr. Charles Wang of the Center for Genomics was honored with the MAQC Society Award by the 2021 MAQC Society for his paper published in Nature Biotechnology online in 2020.
- LLU Center for Genomics Dr. Charles Wang shared his findings at the 2021 MAQC society annual meeting about his multicenter single-cell RNA sequencing benchmarking study published in Nature Biotechnology.
- LLU Center for Genomics Dr. Charles Wang lab published a multi-center single-cell sequencing benchmarking study paper online in Nature Biotechnology in December 2020. On December 23, 2020, Dr. Charles Wang and Dr. Wanqiu Chen shared their story behind their Nature Biotechnology publication.
- Dr. Charles Wang of the LLU Basic Sciences Department and Dr. Mathew Bock of the Department of Pediatric Cardiology received a GCAT grant in 2018 to study simultaneous cellular reprogramming and genome editing of heart cells.
- LLU Center for Genomics Dr. Charles Wang was awarded a grant by the American Heart Association (AHA) in 2018 to reprogram blood cells.
- LLU Center for Genomics received fund from the Ardmore Institute of Health (AIH) in 2016 to acquire an Illumina next-generation sequencing instrument.
- Dr. Charles Wang of the LLU Basic Sciences and Dr. Khashayar Dashtipour of the Department of Neurology received a GCAT grant in 2015 to study DNA methylation patterns and susceptibility of Parkinson’s Disease.
- LLU Center for Genomics Dr. Charles Wang was awarded a NIH S10 grant from the NIH Office of Research Infrastructure Programs in 2015 to acquire an Illumina next-gen DNA sequencer to jump start the genomics center.