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DOI 10.1007/s10330-006-0509-7
Personage Column:
ZENG Yixin
ZENG Yixin, Professor and Director, Cancer Centerand the State Key Laboratory of Oncology in SouthernChina, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. He ob-tained the Bachelor Degree of Medicine from HengyangMedical College, Hunan Province in 1985 and obtainedthe doctoral degree of Medical Science in 1990 from theSun Yat-sen University of Medical Sciences where he isnow working. He was elected as a member of the Chi-nese Academy of Sciences in 2005. Besides, Professor Zengalso has many other academic positions including the VicePresident of the China Anti-Cancer Association, the Presi-dent of the board of the International Society on Epstein-Barr Virus & Related Diseases, a member of the StatePharmacopoeia Commission of China and the SFDA (Sino-Food & Drug Administration) Drug Evaluation Commit-tee, a member of the American Association of CancerResearch. He works in many journal editorial boards in-cluding several internal journals like Cell Cycle, CancerBiology and Therapy and the Journal of TranslationalMedicine. He has been the Editor-in-chief of the ChineseJournal of Cancer for many years, which has been indexedby Medline and Index Medics.
He received postdoctoral training in Tokyo Metropoli-tan Institute of Gerontology and Tokyo University Medi-cal Institute and worked on tyrosine kinase signaling path-way. He cloned the JAK3 kinase gene and firstly identi-fied its involvement in IL-7 signaling cascade. The findingswere published in FEBS Letters. Late on, he moved toDr. Wafik El-Deiry’s lab in Howard Hughes Medical Insti-tute, University of Pennsylvania. As a Research Associate,he focused on tumor suppressor p53, p21 and the breastcancer susceptibility gene Brca1. During his staying from1994–1997, he identified a p53-independent pathway foractivation of p21. He also unveiled the mechanism of up-regulation of p21 expression by transcription factor AP-2.Besides, he joined many other projects. The findings fromhim and his colleagues have resulted in several importantpublications in journals with high impact factors includingOncogene, Cancer Research, Nature and Nature Genetics.
In recent years, he has been focusing on nasopharyn-geal carcinoma (NPC), a major malignancy in southernChina and Southeast Asia and his interest includes iden-tification of genetic susceptibility genes, the mechanismsfor Epstein-Barr (EB) virus-mediated NPC pathogenesisand gene-targeted therapy for NPC. His lab is the firstin determining the full-length sequence of the EB virusisolated from a NPC patient, which is around 172 kb andwith thousands of variations as compared with the pro-totype B95.8 isolated from African. The virus strain wastermed GD1 with an indication of “Guangdong Strain 1”.
The sequence variations in the GD1 may suggest the ex-istence of NPC-associated EB virus, and probably maypartially explain the high incidence of NPC in the region.Moreover, based on a large number of NPC family analy-sis, his lab clarified the genetic mode for a familial NPCinheritance. Through a whole genome linkage and haplo-type analyses, they further fine mapped the NPC geneticsusceptibility gene to the 4p11–p14 region of the humanchromosome 4. Furthermore, they discovered a close link-ing between functional variant -32G/A in the promoter ofgene LOC344967 and the familiar NPC cases.
He has published more than 140 scientific papers in do-mestic and international journals, including Nature andNature Genetics. He is also the Editor of the textbook“Oncology” for Chinese graduate students. He has re-ceived many grants from different sources, including ChinaNational Outstanding Youth Grant (1998–2003), the ChinaMedical Board (New York) Grant (1998–2003), China Na-tional Natural Science Foundation, the 863 and 973 grantsfrom the Ministry of Science and Technology, and theGuangdong Provincial Scientific Committee Grant. He hasalso received numerous awards including the followings:Award for Excellent Young Teachers in Chinese Universi-ties, Ministry of Education, 2000; Award for Top Ten Sci-entific Achievements in Chinese Universities, 2002; FirstClass Prize for Scientific Advancement, China Medical As-sociation, 2003; First Class Prize for Scientific Advance-ment in Guangdong Province, 2004; and Second ClassPrize for Natural Science Achievements, Ministry of Sci-ence and Technology, 2005.