Ming-Ming Zhou, Ph.D., is an expert in

structural A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such ...

and

chemical biology Chemical biology is a scientific discipline spanning the fields of chemistry and biology. The discipline involves the application of chemical techniques, analysis, and often small molecules produced through synthetic chemistry, to the study and ma ...

NMR spectroscopy Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, most commonly known as NMR spectroscopy or magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), is a spectroscopic technique to observe local magnetic fields around atomic nuclei. The sample is placed in a magnetic fiel ...

and drug design. He is currently the Dr. Harold and Golden Lamport Professor and Chairman of the Department of Pharmacological Sciences and Co-Director of the Drug Discovery Institute at the

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS or Mount Sinai), formerly the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, is a private medical school in New York City. It is the academic teaching arm of the Mount Sinai Health System, which manages eight ...

and

Mount Sinai Health System The Mount Sinai Health System is a hospital network in New York City. It was formed in September 2013 by merging the operations of Continuum Health Partners and the Mount Sinai Medical Center. The Health System is structured around eight hospit ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

as well as Professor of Oncological Sciences. Zhou has published more than 180 research articles and is an inventor of 28 patents. His research has been funded by grants from federal, state and private research foundations including the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

, the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

, the New York State Stem Cell Science, the Institute for the Study of Aging, the

American Foundation for AIDS Research amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, known until 2005 as the American Foundation for AIDS Research, is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to the support of AIDS research, HIV prevention, treatment education, and the advocacy of ...

, the

American Cancer Society The American Cancer Society (ACS) is a nationwide voluntary health organization dedicated to eliminating cancer. Established in 1913, the society is organized into six geographical regions of both medical and lay volunteers operating in more than ...

GlaxoSmithKline GSK plc, formerly GlaxoSmithKline plc, is a British multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with global headquarters in London, England. Established in 2000 by a merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham. GSK is the ten ...

the Michael J. Fox Foundation The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research is dedicated to finding a cure for Parkinson's disease (PD) established in 2000 by Michael J. Fox. It concentrates on funding research and ensuring the development of improved therapies for ...

, the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation, and the

Wellcome Trust The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of one of the predecessors of Glaxo ...

. He serves on the board of directors at the New York Structural Biology Center, as well as on the editorial boards of ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters, the Journal of Molecular Cell Biology and

Cancer Research Cancer research is research into cancer to identify causes and develop strategies for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and cure. Cancer research ranges from epidemiology, molecular bioscience to the performance of clinical trials to evaluate and ...

. Zhou received the GlaxoSmithKline Drug Discovery Research Award in 2003 for his work in anti-HIV/AIDS therapy development, and the Jacobi Medallion in 2019. He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2012).

Biography

Zhou earned his B.E. in chemical engineering from the

East China University of Science and Technology East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST, ) is a public research university with two campuses located in Shanghai, China. Established in 1952 as East China Institute of Chemical Technology, it has evolved from an institution with ...

(

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

, PRC) in 1984. He earned his M.S. in

chemistry Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...

from the

Michigan Technological University Michigan Technological University (Michigan Tech, MTU, or simply Tech) is a public research university in Houghton, Michigan, founded in 1885 as the Michigan Mining School, the first post-secondary institution in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. ...

in 1988 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

in 1993. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at

Abbott Laboratories Abbott Laboratories is an American multinational medical devices and health care company with headquarters in Abbott Park, Illinois, United States. The company was founded by Chicago physician Wallace Calvin Abbott in 1888 to formulate known dr ...

in Chicago, Illinois, then joined the faculty of the Mount Sinai Medical School in 1997. Zhou’s research is directed at better understanding of the biology of epigenetic control of gene transcription of human genome to attain both the underlying basic principles and rational design of novel chemical compounds that modulate gene expression in chromatin. His research studies have broad implications in human biology and disease, ranging from cell development, to stem cell self-renewal and differentiation, and re-programming to human cancer and inflammation, as well as neurodegenerative disorders. Among his major contributions to science is the Zhou Lab's seminal discovery of the

bromodomain A bromodomain is an approximately 110 amino acid protein domain that recognizes acetylated lysine residues, such as those on the ''N''-terminal tails of histones. Bromodomains, as the "readers" of lysine acetylation, are responsible in transducin ...

as the acetyl-lysine binding domain ('chromatin reader') in gene transcription (''Nature'' 1999), and their first demonstration of druggability and therapeutic potential of bromodomain proteins in gene transcription to treat a wide array of human diseases including cancer and inflammation. This concept has had transformative impact in epigenetic drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry. The Zhou Lab further discovered the tandem PHD finger of DPF3b as a first alternative to the bromodomain for acetyl-lysine binding (''Nature'' 2010), and the PAZ domain as the RNA binding domain in RNAi (''Nature'' 2003). His work also addresses the role of histone lysine methylation (''Nature Cell Biol.'' 2008) as well as long non-coding RNA in epigenetic control of gene transcription in human stem cell maintenance and differentiation (''Mol. Cell'' 2010). Zhou's work in rational design of chemical probes for mechanism-driven research led to the discovery of the

HIV The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of ''Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immune ...

Tat/human co-activator

PCAF P300/CBP-associated factor (PCAF), also known as K(lysine) acetyltransferase 2B (KAT2B), is a human gene and transcriptional coactivator associated with p53. Structure Several domains of PCAF can act independently or in unison to enable its funct ...

interaction as a potential novel anti-HIV therapy target. His group has developed chemical probes that modulate the transcriptional activity of human tumor suppressor

p53 p53, also known as Tumor protein P53, cellular tumor antigen p53 (UniProt name), or transformation-related protein 53 (TRP53) is a regulatory protein that is often mutated in human cancers. The p53 proteins (originally thought to be, and often s ...

under stress conditions. His recent work includes the development of a novel gene transcriptional silencing technology. Additional research discoveries include structural mechanisms as well as drug target discovery and validation for human cancers, particularly

triple-negative breast cancer Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is any breast cancer that lacks or show low levels of estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) overexpression and/or gene amplification (i.e. the tum ...

(TNBC), and inflammatory disorders such as

inflammatory bowel disease Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a group of inflammation, inflammatory conditions of the colon (anatomy), colon and small intestine, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis being the principal types. Crohn's disease affects the small intestine a ...

(IBD) and

multiple sclerosis Multiple (cerebral) sclerosis (MS), also known as encephalomyelitis disseminata or disseminated sclerosis, is the most common demyelinating disease, in which the insulating covers of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord are damaged. This d ...

. Current and past society memberships include The Harvey Society, the

Biophysical Society The Biophysical Society is an international scientific society whose purpose is to lead the development and dissemination of knowledge in biophysics. Founded in 1958, the Society currently consists of over 7,500 members in academia, government, an ...

, the

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all d ...

, the

American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) is a learned society that was founded on December 26, 1906, at a meeting organized by John Jacob Abel (Johns Hopkins University). The roots of the society were in the American Phy ...

, the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

and the

New York Academy of Sciences The New York Academy of Sciences (originally the Lyceum of Natural History) was founded in January 1817 as the Lyceum of Natural History. It is the fourth oldest scientific society in the United States. An independent, nonprofit organization wit ...

. He serves on multiple editorial boards and reviews grants for the

, the

American Heart Association The American Heart Association (AHA) is a nonprofit organization in the United States that funds cardiovascular medical research, educates consumers on healthy living and fosters appropriate cardiac care in an effort to reduce disability and death ...

, the

and the

Awards and honors

*2019 The Jacobi Medallion, The Mount Sinai Health System *2012 Elected Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) *2009 Elected Member, The Academy of Sciences & Arts at Michigan Technological University *2006 Dr. Harold and Golden Lamport Professorship in Physiology and Biophysics *2003 GlaxoSmithKlineDrug Discovery and Development Award *1999 American Cancer Society Young Investigator Award

Patents

References

External links

The Mount Sinai Hospital homepageThe Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai homepageDrug Discovery Institute
at The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai {{DEFAULTSORT:Zhou, Ming-Ming Cancer researchers Living people Michigan Technological University alumni Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai faculty Purdue University alumni Stem cell researchers Year of birth missing (living people)