 Junying
Yuan, Ph.D. is a Professor in the
Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical
School. Dr. Yuan received a Ph.D. in Neuroscience
from Harvard University in 1989. Dr. Yuan
carried out her postdoctoral research at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
where she made seminal discoveries about
apoptosis that formed the basis of a Nobel
Prize for Medicine in that field. She was
first appointed as Assistant Professor at
Harvard Medical School in 1992, when she
became a Principal Investigator of the Cardiovascular
Research Center at Massachusetts General
Hospital. She joined the Department of Cell
Biology in 1996 and was appointed a Professor
of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School
in 2000. The Yuan lab aims to understand
the basic mechanisms of cell death as well
as their implications in neurodegenerative
diseases using cellular, genetic, molecular
and chemical biological approaches. The
lab has developed a high throughput assay
for ER stress and identified a small molecule
inhibitor of ER stress induced cell death,
which they named salubrinal (sal). They
have identified a new form of cell death
called "necoptosis" and identified
a small molecule inhibitor named necrostatin-1
(Nec-1). Nec-1 reduced ischemic brain injury
with an extended time window for treatment
and thus may be very important for mediating
acute neurological injury.
Selected Publications:
Sánchez I, Mahlke C, Yuan J.
Pivotal role of oligomerization in
expanded polyglutamine neurodegenerative
disorders. Nature.
2003. 421, 373-9.
Boyce M, Bryant KF, Jousse C, Long
K, Harding HP, Scheuner D, Kaufman
RJ, Ma D, Coen DM, Ron D and Yuan
J. A Selective inhibitor of eIF2a
dephosphorylation protects cells from
ER stress. Science.
2005. 307, 935-939.
Degterev A, Huang Z, Boyce M, Li Y,
Jagtap P, Mizushima N, Cuny GD, Mitchison
TJ, Moskowitz MA and Yuan J. Chemical
inhibitor of nonapoptotic cell death
with therapeutic potential for ischemic
brain injury. Nature Chemical
Biology. 2005. 1, 112-119.
|
|
