Zihai Li (born July 1964[citation needed]) is a board-certified medical oncologist, cancer immunologist, and leader in academic medicine.

[3] Li's research interests primarily focus on the fields of chaperone biology, immune tolerance, cancer immunology and immunotherapy.

[13][14][15] Background: In the 1950s, Prehn, Main, Klein, Old, and others demonstrated the existence of protective immunity against cancer in mice using syngeneic tumor models.

[19] Major contribution to gp96/GRP94 biology: Li defined the ATPase activity of gp96/GRP94,[20] its client network,[10][11][12] its structure-function relationship,[21][22] and the co-chaperone CNPY3.

Through a biochemical approach, Li was the first to demonstrate that gp96/GRP94 is a bona fide member of the HSP90 family, exhibiting ATP binding, intrinsic ATPase activity, and peptide chaperoning functions.

However, the physiological role of gp96/GRP94 remained unclear at the time, partly because gp96/GRP94 is absent in yeast, a common genetic model used to study eukaryotic HSPs.

Conceptually, it catalyzes the revelation that ancient chaperones have gained specialized function in mammals, opening a new field of developing chaperone-based therapeutics for a variety of diseases.

Li's other contributions to the field of medicine and biology include the discovery of a molecular key from platelets (via GARP) for cancer immune evasion[32][33] and the first demonstration of CNPY2 as a critical sensor for PERK-mediated unfolded protein response.