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Lab Members


Principal Investigator
Junji Watanabe, PhD profile image
Junji Watanabe, PhD
Project Scientist
Liron Israel, PhD profile image
Liron Israel, PhD
Project Scientist

Liron Israel, PhD, earned her MS degree in medicinal chemistry from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and her PhD from Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel. During that time, her research focused on radiochemistry and PET radiotracers (including manufacturing and QC for patients), multistep organic synthesis and nanotechnology aimed at biomedical applications such as siRNA delivery and MRI. Dr. Israel has also worked in industrial R&D in the fields of process development and multistep organic synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in GMP/GLP surroundings. She completed her postdoctoral training at Cedars-Sinai in the Department of Neurosurgery in 2019, where her research focused on nanocarriers with blood-brain barrier (BBB) crossing abilities for imaging and treatment of brain tumors and Alzheimer’s disease. She is currently a project scientist working on nano drug delivery systems, cancer vaccines, and immunotherapy aimed to treat tumors of the brain.

Michelot Michel, BS profile image
Michelot Michel, BS
Research Associate II
Hongqiang Wang, MD profile image
Hongqiang Wang, MD
Research Associate

Hongqiang Wang, MD, is currently a research associate III at Cedars-Sinai's Department of Neurosurgery and works as a clinical trial team member. His main research area is manufacturing vaccines for brain tumor patients and monitoring their immune responses to assess the efficacy of vaccines for the treatment of brain tumor. Wang earned his MD at Shanghai Medical University (now Shanghai Medical School of Fudan University) and joined Cedars-Sinai in 2008.

Contact the Yu Lab

127 S. San Vicente Blvd.
Pavilion, Suite A-6215
Los Angeles, CA 90048

Fax: 310-967-8592