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College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Department of Chemistry

Xing Wang

Profile picture for Xing Wang

Contact Information

0250 Everitt Laboratory (EL)
1102 Everitt Lab MC 278
1406 W. Green St
Urbana, IL 61801
Associate Professor, Department of Bioengineering and Research Associate Professor of Chemistry

Biography

Dr. Xing Wang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering, affiliated with the Chemistry Department, IGB, HMNTL, and CCIL at UIUC.  He received a Ph.D. in chemistry from New York University and did a postdoc at Princeton University mainly focusing on RNA biology and noncoding RNA-mediated genome editing.  He is an inventor of the DNA Star, DNA Net, and DNA NanoGripper platforms, and developed the concept of pattern-recognition enabled multivalent molecular interactions.  He is a recipient of the Mikashi Award (UIUC) in 2021 and Spoke Award (CZ BioHub Chicago) in 2024.  Before joining UIUC, Dr. Wang was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Research Interests

Dr. Wang is the inventor of the DNA Star, DNA Net, and DNA NanoGripper platforms that utilizes designer DNA nanostructures (DDNs) to create biosensors and biomedicines.  His Nucleic Acids Programming Lab engineers DDNs that offer a "plug-and-play" platform to create functional nanomaterials with aptamers, nanobodies, fluorophores for developing (1) ultrasensitive and inexpensive biosensors for rapid disease diagnostics in both point-of-care and high throughput settings, (2) effective therapeutic candidates for infectious disease treatment/prevention and cancer immunotherapy, (3) new strategies and reagents for high resolution imaging.  His research group is supported by NIH and NSF.

Education

Ph.D. in Chemistry, New York University

Additional Campus Affiliations

Associate Professor, Bioengineering
Associate Professor, Micro and Nanotechnology Lab
Associate Professor, Chemistry
Associate Professor, Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology

Academic Service

Dr. Wang directs the Nucleic Acids Programming Lab (NAPL) at UIUC.  He is affiliated with HMNTL, IGB, and CCIL.

Highlighted Publications

Dwivedy, A., Baskaran, D., Sharma, G., Hong, W., Gandavadi, D., Krissanaprasit, A., Han, J., Liu, Y., Zimmers, Z., Mafokwane, T., Hayah, I., Chauhan, N., Zheng, M., Yao, S., Fraser, K., Decker, J. S., Jin, X., Wang, H., Friedman, A. D., & Wang, X. (2025). Engineering Novel DNA Nanoarchitectures for Targeted Drug Delivery and Aptamer Mediated Apoptosis in Cancer Therapeutics. Advanced Functional Materials. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202425394

Zhou, L., Xiong, Y., Dwivedy, A., Zheng, M., Cooper, L., Shepherd, S., Song, T., Hong, W., Le, L. T. P., Chen, X., Umrao, S., Rong, L., Wang, T., Cunningham, B. T., & Wang, X. (2024). Bioinspired designer DNA NanoGripper for virus sensing and potential inhibition. Science Robotics, 9(96), Article eadi2084. https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.adi2084

Chauhan, N., Xiong, Y., Ren, S., Dwivedy, A., Magazine, N., Zhou, L., Jin, X., Zhang, T., Cunningham, B. T., Yao, S., Huang, W., & Wang, X. (2023). Net-Shaped DNA Nanostructures Designed for Rapid/Sensitive Detection and Potential Inhibition of the SARS-CoV-2 Virus. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 145(37), 20214-20228. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.2c04835

Ren, S., Fraser, K., Kuo, L., Chauhan, N., Adrian, A. T., Zhang, F., Linhardt, R. J., Kwon, P. S., & Wang, X. (2022). Designer DNA nanostructures for viral inhibition. Nature Protocols, 17(2), 282-326. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41596-021-00641-y

Kwon, P. S., Ren, S., Kwon, S. J., Kizer, M. E., Kuo, L., Xie, M., Zhu, D., Zhou, F., Zhang, F., Kim, D., Fraser, K., Kramer, L. D., Seeman, N. C., Dordick, J. S., Linhardt, R. J., Chao, J., & Wang, X. (2020). Designer DNA architecture offers precise and multivalent spatial pattern-recognition for viral sensing and inhibition. Nature Chemistry, 12(1), 26-35. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-019-0369-8

Chauhan, N., & Wang, X. (2021). Nanocages for virus inhibition. Nature Materials, 20(9), 1176-1177. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-021-01088-y

Li, N., Canady, T. D., Huang, Q., Wang, X., Fried, G. A., & Cunningham, B. T. (2021). Photonic resonator interferometric scattering microscopy. Nature communications, 12(1), Article 1744. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21999-3

He, Z., Han, Z., Kizer, M., Linhardt, R. J., Wang, X., Sinyukov, A. M., Wang, J., Deckert, V., Sokolov, A. V., Hu, J., & Scully, M. O. (2019). Tip-Enhanced Raman Imaging of Single-Stranded DNA with Single Base Resolution. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 141(2), 753-757. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.8b11506

Kizer, M. E., Linhardt, R. J., Chandrasekaran, A. R., & Wang, X. (2019). A Molecular Hero Suit for In Vitro and In Vivo DNA Nanostructures. Small, 15(26), Article 1805386. https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.201805386

Wang, X., Chandrasekaran, A. R., Shen, Z., Ohayon, Y. P., Wang, T., Kizer, M. E., Sha, R., Mao, C., Yan, H., Zhang, X., Liao, S., Ding, B., Chakraborty, B., Jonoska, N., Niu, D., Gu, H., Chao, J., Gao, X., Li, Y., ... Seeman, N. C. (2019). Paranemic Crossover DNA: There and Back Again. Chemical reviews, 119(10), 6273-6289. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemrev.8b00207

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Recent Publications

Dwivedy, A., Baskaran, D., Sharma, G., Hong, W., Gandavadi, D., Krissanaprasit, A., Han, J., Liu, Y., Zimmers, Z., Mafokwane, T., Hayah, I., Chauhan, N., Zheng, M., Yao, S., Fraser, K., Decker, J. S., Jin, X., Wang, H., Friedman, A. D., & Wang, X. (2025). Engineering Novel DNA Nanoarchitectures for Targeted Drug Delivery and Aptamer Mediated Apoptosis in Cancer Therapeutics. Advanced Functional Materials. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202425394

Liu, L., Ayupova, T., Umrao, S., Akin, L. D., Lee, H. K., Tibbs, J., Wang, X., Demirci, U., & Cunningham, B. T. (2025). A biosensor-integrated filtration device for nanoparticle isolation and label-free imaging. Lab on a chip, 25(8), 2073-2084. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1039/d5lc00089k

Xiong, Y., Zhou, L., Cooper, L., Zheng, M., Shepherd, S., Dwivedy, A., Song, T., Hong, W., Chen, X., Liu, S., Le, L. T. P., Umrao, S., Rong, L., Wang, T., Wang, X., & Cunningham, B. T. (2025). Photonic Crystal Enhanced Fluorescence with DNA-based Nano-gripper for Ultrasensitive Intact Viral Pathogen Biosensing. In D. Fixler, & S. Wachsmann-Hogiu (Eds.), Nanoscale Imaging, Sensing, and Actuation for Biomedical Applications XXII Article 1333508 (Progress in Biomedical Optics and Imaging - Proceedings of SPIE; Vol. 13335). SPIE. https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3043958

Fang, Z., Wu, Z., Wu, X., Chen, S., Wang, X., Umrao, S., & Dwivedy, A. (2024). APIPred: An XGBoost-Based Method for Predicting Aptamer-Protein Interactions. Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, 64(7), 2290-2301. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jcim.3c00713

Le, L. T. P., Nguyen, A. H. Q., Phan, L. M. T., Ngo, H. T. T., Wang, X., Cunningham, B., Valera, E., Bashir, R., Taylor-Robinson, A. W., & Do, C. D. (2024). Current smartphone-assisted point-of-care cancer detection: Towards supporting personalized cancer monitoring. TrAC - Trends in Analytical Chemistry, 174, Article 117681. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trac.2024.117681

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College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Department of Chemistry

505 South Mathews Avenue

Urbana, IL 61801

(217) 333-5071

Email: chemistry@illinois.edu

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