ASCI / Young Physician-Scientist Awards, 2024
The Young Physician-Scientist Awards (YPSA) recognize physician-scientists who are early in their first faculty appointment and have made notable achievements in their research.
About the awardee
Fei-Li Kuang, MD, PhD is a physician-scientist dedicated to caring for patients with eosinophilic disorders and discovering the cellular and molecular underpinnings of their disease pathogenesis. She is a graduate of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine MSTP where she identified epigenetic markers associated with B cell IgH class-switch and somatic hypermutation under the mentorship of Dr. Matthew Scharff and completed Internal Medicine residency at Columbia-New York Presbyterian. Dr. Kuang trained at NIAID in Allergy-Immunology and conducted clinical and translational research in hypereosinophilic syndromes (HES) under the mentorship of Dr. Amy Klion. Her post-doctoral time culminated in several studies on eosinophil depletion biologics in HES, including a New England Journal of Medicine publication of the phase 2 clinical trial for which she is the primary author.
Dr. Kuang is a practicing allergist-immunologist at Northwestern University, focusing on patients with eosinophilic disorders and unexplained eosinophilia, with a specialization in eosinophilic GI disease. Her laboratory research aims to elucidate 1) eosinophilic immunophenotypic and transcriptomic signatures in eosinophilic GI disease as compared to other eosinophilic disorders (HES, DRESS, eosinophilic asthma), and 2) T cell immunophenotypic signatures including TCR repertoires in food-triggered atopic disease such as EGID. She has recently been awarded a NIAID K23 Career Development award, a foundation award from APFED and a society award from AAAAI to support her research endeavors. The ultimate goals are to uncover clues to disease pathogenesis to support discovery of therapeutics and biomarkers, and to deepen our understanding of the eosinophil in human biology.