Organizing Committee Member
Qian Tao
Professor
The Chinese University of
Hong Kong
Biography
Prof. Tao obtained his PhD from the University of Hong Kong and did his postdoc training in Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He was appointed as Assistant Professor in Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1999, and later Associate Professor and Full Professor (2008) in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He leads the Cancer Epigenetics Laboratory in the State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Prof Tao’s group has established the CpG methylomes of common tumors in Hong Kong including nasopharyngeal, esophageal, lung, digestive cancers and lymphomas; identified multiple novel TSGs (e.g. PCDH10, RASAL1, ZNF382, BLU, ZNF545, BCL6B, JPH3, DLEC1, etc) and characterized their molecular functions in cell signaling and tumorigenesis; and also developed promising epigenetic biomarkers and therapeutics. He has published 160 papers (total citations: 8500; h-index: 55) on cancer epigenetics and cancer biology in international journals, including PNAS, Lancet, JCO, Cancer Res, Blood, Gut, Hepatology and Theranostics, and 4 book chapters on epigenetics. He is an external reviewer for multiple scientific journals and an academic Editor for several journals. He also serves as a grant review panel member for China Natural Science Foundation (NSFC) and a reviewer for several other agents including AICR, Wellcome Trust, MRC/UK, Dutch Cancer Society, Singapore National Medical Research Council, and China Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST). He has been a vice-President for the international Epigenetics Society (http://epigeneticssocietyint.com/) since 2008.
Research Area
Cancer epigenomics: identification of novel tumor suppressor genes (TSG) and their functional/mechanistic characterization in tumorigenesis ; Identification of epigenetic modifier genes involved in aberrant CpG methylation and chromatin-remodeling in tumors; Development of epigenetic biomarkers and epigenetic therapeutics; Epigenetic regulation of EBV genes and EBV-modulated aberrant epigenetic programming in EBV pathogenesis