Qizhi Tang, PhD

Qizhi Tang received her PhD in immunology from University of Illinois at Chicago and completed postdoctoral fellowships investigating mechanisms of immune tolerance at University of Chicago and UCSF, where she joined the faculty in 2002 as Assistant Professor in Pathology where she researched mechanisms of immune tolerance. She joined the Transplantation Division in the Department of Surgery in 2007 to lead basic research and translational research in transplant immunology and direct the UCSF Transplantation Research Laboratory. She joined the Diabetes Center in 2020.

A major research focus in the Tang Lab is on regulatory T cell therapy for autoimmune diseases and transplantation. Since 2011, she has also been co-directing the regulatory T cell therapy program at UCSF, which has supported 10 early-phase clinical trials in type 1 diabetes, pemphigus, islet transplantation, kidney transplantation and liver transplantation. Another area of research in the Tang Lab is on optimizing islet transplantation to enable highly efficient immunosuppression-free replacement of pancreatic beta cells for the treatment of type 1 diabetes. She is also Co-Chair of the JDRF Northern California Center of Excellence.