Prof. Xuejun Jiang Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, USA

Dr. Xuejun Jiang is a Member and Professor at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), and an adjunct professor with Cornell University Weill Medical College. His lab investigates fundamental cellular processes highly relevant to cancer and other human diseases, particularly programmed cell death and a stress-responsive cell survival pathway called autophagy.... read moreHis lab aims to translate their basic research findings into novel therapeutic approaches. Dr. Jiang has made significant contribution to our understanding of programmed cell death and autophagy. For example, his work uncovered the detailed mechanisms by which cytochrome c and nucleotides trigger the formation of a protein complex called apoptosome, and downstream caspase activation, which is a decisive event of mitochondria-mediated apoptosis. His lab is among the first to discover the ULK1 autophagy-initiating kinase complex that functions to sense mTORC1-mediated nutrient signal and to relay such a signal for the activation of downstream autophagy pathway. In the emerging field of ferroptosis (a form of iron-dependent cell death), they discovered intimate communication of various cellular metabolic processes with ferroptosis. They also defined the role of several cancer-relevant signaling pathways in the regulation of ferroptosis, revealing new strategies for the development of novel, ferroptosis-based cancer therapies. Dr. Jiang graduated from Fudan University, China. He obtained his PhD degree at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, studying signal transduction of G proteins and phospholipases, under the supervision of Professor Paul Sternweis. As a postdoctoral fellow, he studied mitochondria-mediated apoptosis in Dr. Xiaodong Wang’s laboratory. He joined MSKCC in 2003 and has been working there since then.