The Department of Biochemistry's weekly BCH 252 seminar series is presented this week by

Dr. Greg Wang, PHD & Associate Professor, UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center & Dept of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill

Seminar Title: "Chromatin-based modulations underlying gene regulation and pathogenesis"

Biography: Dr. Greg Wang is currently Associate Professor at UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center & Dept of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, NC, USA. He received the PHD degree from University of California, San Diego, followed by a postdoctoral training at Rockefeller University. Dr. Wang’s research programs focus on mechanistic understanding of how chemical modifications of chromatin (including methylations of DNA and histone tails) regulate gene expression and cell fate determination during normal development, and how their deregulations lead to human disease. His laboratory recently identified and characterized novel proteins that specifically bind to histone lysine methylation. These histone modification ‘readers’ are crucially involved in gene and genome regulation, cell lineage specification and/or cancerous transformation. Importantly, discovery of small-molecule inhibitors to target chromatin modulators has become an area of intensive investigation and holds great promise for therapies. One of his research goals is to yield potential drug candidates with preclinical cancer models, which shall pave a way for translating new therapeutic approaches in future. For more information, please visit his lab website: www.gregwanglab.com

Dr. Wang’s research is funded by grants of NIH. Wang is an American Cancer Society Research Scholar, an American Society of Hematology Scholar in basic science, and a Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Scholar. Greg Wang receives the Philip and Ruth Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement from UNC (2019).

Seminar Host: Dr. Jikui Song; jikui.song@ucr.edu