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Wenjian Gan PhD

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Rank
  • Associate Professor
College
  • College of Medicine
Department
  • Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Academic Focus
  • Post-translational modifications, cell signaling, epigenetics, metabolism, and cancer
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Locations

Office Location
street
room

Biography

Education and Training

2012-2018    Postdoctoral Fellow, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School

2007-2012    Ph.D., Peking University, Beijing, P.R. China.

2001-2005    B.S., Biotechnology, Guangxi University, Nanning, P.R. China.

Research

A major research focus in my new laboratory is to investigate the roles of arginine methylation in cell signaling, epigenetics, metabolism, and cancers. Protein arginine methylation is one of the most common posttranslational modifications and plays critical roles in various fundamental cellular processes. Aberrant expression of protein arginine methyltransferases (PRMTs) is frequently observed in various cancers. Their high expression is associated with poor survival of cancer patients. We are interested in understanding how arginine methylation is regulated, how arginine methylation contributes to cancers, and how to target arginine methylation pathway in cancers. Our goals are to advance current knowledge of arginine methylation biology and to identify novel targets/strategies to target the arginine methylation pathway for cancer therapy. We employ a range of methods in our studies, including biochemistry, molecular and cellular biology, transcriptomic/proteomic/metabolomic approaches, cancer cell lines, xenograft mouse models, genetic mouse models, and cancer patient samples.