Bing Li is an immunologist, researcher, and academic. He is an Endowed Professor for Cancer Immunology, a professor of Pathology at the University of Iowa, and the Director of Iowa Cancer and Obesity Initiative. He is also the founder of BMImmune Inc.
Li's research has focused on how FABP4 and FABP5 regulate metabolism and signaling in leukocytes. His work has linked FABPs to diseases like obesity, chronic inflammation, and cancer risk and development, while also identifying clinical applications through targeted FABP activity modification.
Li has been appointed as the University Scholar by the University of Louisville, Endowed Professor in Cancer Immunology Research by the University of Iowa and was featured as a Spotlight Investigator by Nutrition Frontiers, a publication of the Nutritional Science Research Group (NSRG), NCI, NIH. He serves as the Guest Editor of Tumor Microenvironment for the journal Cancers, and has been an Editorial Board Member for the Journal of Allergy, and BMC Immunology.
Education and early career
In 1994, Li graduated from Jiangsu University School of Medicine and went on to serve as a Research Assistant there. In 2001, he completed his M.S. in Immunology from Southeast University School of Medicine and earned a Ph.D. in Immunology from Peking University Health Science Center in 2004. Subsequently, he was appointed as a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Louisville, followed by a Postdoctoral Fellow position in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the same university from 2007 to 2010.
Career
Li was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota in 2011. In 2016, he was appointed as an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Louisville. Since 2021, he has been serving as a professor of pathology, and an Endowed Professor in Cancer Immunology at the Department of Pathology of the University of Iowa.
Li has been appointed as the Director of Iowa Cancer and Obesity Initiative at the University of Iowa and serves as a Steering Committee Member of the NCI MeDOC Consortium and Nutritional Group Chair for NCI MeDOC Consortium Program at NIH/NCI.
Research
Li has conducted research on the role of fatty acid binding proteins (FABPs), particularly FABP4 and FABP5, in chronic inflammation, obesity, cancer development, and their influence on immune cell functions relevant to obesity-related diseases. In 2020, he presented a SnapShot outlining FABPs' functions, which was published in the cell biology journal Cell.