Ming-Ming Zhou, PhD
Co-Director, Drug Discovery Institute
Dr. Harold and Golden Lamport Professorship in Physiology and Biophysics
Professor and Chair, Department of Pharmacological Sciences
Professor, Department of Oncological Sciences
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
“Mount Sinai is really my scientific home,” says Ming-Ming Zhou, PhD, one of nine accomplished physicians and researchers who received the 2019 Jacobi Medallion—one of Mount Sinai’s highest awards. “It has inspired me to do things that I did not expect before.”
His research interest is directed at better understanding of the basic principles that govern epigenetic regulation of gene transcription in human biology of health and diseases. Dr. Zhou was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012.
“I trained in chemistry, I was trying to see how I can apply chemistry to make a difference,” says Dr. Zhou. “Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression and could lead to the development of new therapeutics for a number of diseases including cancer. That’s what we are trying to focus on.”
“Dr. Zhou’s own laboratory is developing new drugs for the treatment of cancer using novel techniques involving gene transcription,” says Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and President for Academic Affairs for the Mount Sinai Health System. “He’s also the co-director of our drug discovery institute, which supports the research in other departments that are going to lead to new therapeutic approaches to cancer and heart disease and neurological disorders.”
Dr. Zhou’s research has had a transformative impact in epigenetic drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry.
“We always tend to start a new project by asking some very basic questions, such as how cells sense and respond to physiological and environmental cues. One of our early discoveries has turned out to be the foundation for a new class of epigenetics drugs,” says Dr. Zhou. “We also discovered a family of proteins that play a very important role…This discovery has paved the way for us to develop new therapeutic treatments for inflammatory bowel diseases and multiple sclerosis.”
“What I set out to do is still important to me, which is truly develop new medicines to help patients,” he says. “After 22 years at Mount Sinai, I see this aspiration is more likely to be within reach.”
Adds Kelley Yan, MD, PhD, Dorothy L. and Daniel H. Silberberg Assistant Professor of Medicine, Columbia Center for Human Development, Department of Medicine; Department of Genetics and Development, Columbia University Medical Center: “What’s much more important than what we do with our own two hands is the legacy that we leave behind and those we’ve trained. He has taught by example, and he has really paved the way for a generation of scientists like myself.”
