Lu Wang

About

Lu Wang is the Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies in Chemistry and a Senior Preceptor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. She is involved in teaching several courses at Harvard, including two undergraduate courses, Chemistry 10 (Quantum, Statistical, and Computational Foundations of Chemistry) and Physical Sciences 11 (Foundations and Frontiers of Modern Chemistry: A Molecular and Global Perspective), as well as a graduate course, Chemistry 301hf (Scientific Teaching and Communications: Practicum). In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Lu serves as the Co-Director of the Department’s Undergraduate Teaching Program, overseeing pedagogical and course administration training for the Department’s Preceptors and Curriculum and Pedagogy Managers. She has been recognized for her teaching excellence with multiple awards, including the Certificate of Excellence in Teaching from the Harvard Bok Center and the Star Family Prize for Excellence in First-Year Advising. In 2025, she was named a Harvard Hero, a university-wide award recognizing positive impact in the workplace. Lu joined Harvard’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in 2013 as a Preceptor and previously held a two-year postdoctoral appointment at MIT, where she researched two-dimensional nanobiosensors and contributed to developing and teaching a college chemistry curriculum in Singapore in collaboration with MIT. She earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard…

Research topics

• Medicine
• Biology
• Internal medicine
• Cancer research
• Oncology

Selected publications

• Pan-neuroblastoma analysis reveals age- and signature-associated driver alterations

  Nature Communications · 2020-10-14 · 172 citations

  articleOpen access

  Neuroblastoma is a pediatric malignancy with heterogeneous clinical outcomes. To better understand neuroblastoma pathogenesis, here we analyze whole-genome, whole-exome and/or transcriptome data from 702 neuroblastoma samples. Forty percent of samples harbor at least one recurrent driver gene alteration and most aberrations, including MYCN, ATRX, and TERT alterations, differ in frequency by age. MYCN alterations occur at median 2.3 years of age, TERT at 3.8 years, and ATRX at 5.6 years. COSMIC m…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Discovery of ARD-2585 as an Exceptionally Potent and Orally Active PROTAC Degrader of Androgen Receptor for the Treatment of Advanced Prostate Cancer

  Journal of Medicinal Chemistry · 2021-09-02 · 138 citations

  articleOpen access

  We report herein the discovery of exceptionally potent and orally bioavailable PROTAC AR degraders with ARD-2585 being the most promising compound. ARD-2585 achieves DC50 values of ≤0.1 nM in the VCaP cell line with AR gene amplification and in the LNCaP cell line carrying an AR mutation. It potently inhibits cell growth with IC50 values of 1.5 and 16.2 nM in the VCaP and LNCaP cell lines, respectively, and achieves excellent pharmacokinetics and 51% of oral bioavailability in mice. It is more e…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Strategies toward Discovery of Potent and Orally Bioavailable Proteolysis Targeting Chimera Degraders of Androgen Receptor for the Treatment of Prostate Cancer

  Journal of Medicinal Chemistry · 2021-08-25 · 137 citations

  articleOpen access

  Proteolysis targeting chimera (PROTAC) small-molecule degraders have emerged as a promising new type of therapeutic agents, but the design of PROTAC degraders with excellent oral pharmacokinetics is a major challenge. In this study, we present our strategies toward the discovery of highly potent PROTAC degraders of androgen receptor (AR) with excellent oral pharmacokinetics. Employing thalidomide to recruit cereblon/cullin 4A E3 ligase and through the rigidification of the linker, we discovered…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01LM011177

  NIH · $1.0M · 2016

• Role of BAP1/ASXL3 complex in transcriptional regulation and development

  NIH · $1.8M · 2022–2027

Frequent coauthors

• James H. Brashears

  Rainier Clinical Research Center

  519 shared

• Filip T. Troicki

  Drexel University

  439 shared

• Jaganmohan Poli

  Geisinger Medical Center

  357 shared

• Christin A. Knowlton

  330 shared

• Michelle Kolton Mackay

  330 shared

• Rene Rubin

  329 shared

• Anthony E. Dragun

  294 shared

• Stephan Mose

  Schwarzwald-Baar Klinikum

  254 shared

Awards & honors

• Certificate of Excellence in Teaching (multiple times) by th…
• Star Family Prize for Excellence in First-Year Advising at H…
• Harvard Hero (2025)

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