The rockefeller university

Wenbin Mei

Wenbin Mei, a graduate student in the Elizabeth and Vincent Meyer Laboratory of Systems Cancer Biology led by Sohail Tavazoie, is being honored with the 2025 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award for work showing that a commonly inherited mutation governs breast cancer metastasis and influences survival. The award, given by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, is considered among the most prestigious prizes for graduate students in the biosciences.

Mei’s research capitalized on computational techniques to analyze large patient cohorts from multiple countries. This work identified a highly prevalent variant of the PCSK9 gene, present in the germlines of 70 percent of white women, that was associated with reduced breast cancer survival. Studies in mice confirmed that the variant promotes metastasis, increasing metastatic initiation events by targeting tumoral LRP1 receptors. It is the first evidence that an inherited genetic mutation drives the deadly process by which breast cancer spreads. It also suggests the possibility that therapeutic interventions to inhibit PCSK9 may prevent metastasis in susceptible individuals, and opens the door to a new field of metastasis predisposition genetics as means of uncovering germline mutations linked to other common malignancies.

Mei joined Rockefeller in 2019 after receiving his undergraduate degree from Peking University in China. His work on PCSK9 was published this winter in Cell. To learn more about his research read our December 9 story: Researchers discover a genetic predisposition increasing the risk of breast cancer metastasis.

Mei is the 17^th Rockefeller graduate student to be honored with the Weintraub Award.