Li Li

Li Li’s pursuit of medicine started when she was a teen. Her family was known for practicing traditional Chinese medicine and developed a reputation for curing kidney stones. Following in the footsteps of her elders, she learned and practiced acupuncture on her own extremities under their supervision. She also learned to recognize a variety of medicinal herbs and insects, which to her were fascinating to realize the magical healing power of nature. Under her family’s influence, she also had a fundamental understanding of the medical standards of hygiene and became somewhat of a “clean freak” at school.

In 2000, she was accepted to First Military Medical University in Guangdong Province, as one of two females selected out of Liaoning Province, which had more than 40 million inhabitants at the time. She majored in clinical medicine and her passion quickly became surgical oncology. She focused on colorectal cancer during her two-year internship. During the clinical practice, she was shocked to learn just how limited the treatment options are. This motivated her to dive into research to explore new treatment possibilities for patients. She then obtained an M.Sc. in biomedical sciences, after which she worked at School of Pharmacy and Institute of Cancer Therapeutics at University of Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK. To complete her understanding of pre-clinical aspects of cancer, she moved on to translational oncology and earned a Ph.D. in experimental surgical oncology. As a post-doc at Department of Radiation Oncology at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC, her focus was on small animal surgery as well as microsurgery. 

A move to Colorado State University afforded her the chance to study cancer from a new angle. She works in the biorepository lab at the Flint Animal Cancer Center collecting clinical samples from patients and helping facilitate research projects. She considers this job the missing link in her global view on cancer. Moving across the world, her world has been continuously changing. However, there’s been only one unshakable focus: her participation in the war against cancer. No matter how minuscule, she’s in the fight with you.