Skip to main content
Crohn's & Colitis Congress 2025 Main banner

Siyan Cao, MD, PhD (he/him/his)

Assistant Professor of Medicine
Washington University School of Medicine
St. Louis, Missouri

Dr. Cao was born in Chengdu in Southwestern China. After college at Zhejiang University, China, he entered the PhD program in Biochemistry at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He then moved to New York where he obtained MD at Columbia University. Afterwards, he completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of California San Francisco and gastroenterology fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Cao joined the faculty at the Division of Gastroenterology at Washington University in July 2022, and was promoted to Assistant Professor of Medicine in July 2024. His laboratory studies disease-relevant cellular and tissue signaling pathways in IBD using molecular and cell biology, multi-omics technologies (e.g., single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, proteomics, whole-genome/exome sequencing, metagenomics), murine models, and human tissues. His current projects include: 1) Innate lymphoid cells in murine IBD; 2) Innate immune mechanisms in perianal and fibrostenotic Crohn’s disease; 3) Multi-omics analyses of IBD-related complications; 4) Biomarker discovery for IBD therapies; and 5) Pathogenesis of very early onset IBD using genomics, patient organoids, and murine models. His laboratory has been supported by the NIH/NIDDK, Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, American Gastroenterological Association, Doris Duke Foundation, and Washington University Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences. In his free time, Dr. Cao enjoys outdoor activities with family as well as trail and ultra running.

Presentation(s):