Journal of Cancer Biology

Jason X. Cheng

University of Chicago

USA

Academic Editor

Biography

Dr. Jason Cheng is a board-certified hematopathologist and cancer biologist. Dr. Cheng was trained in the following fields with the respective mentors: 1. Medicine, including medical school, surgical residence and post-graduate training in tumor pathology at Kunming Medical University and Beijing Medical University in China, respectively. 2. Molecular Pharmacology, PhD dissertation with Professor Rudy Juliano who co-discovered multidrug resistant protein/P-glycoprotein with Professor Victor Ling. 3.

The current focus of Dr. Cheng’s research is focusing on the role of RNA epigenetics, more specifically RNA:m5C and its writers NSUN1 (NOP2/NOL1) and NSUN2, in hematological malignancies and development of novel RNA epigenetics-driven diagnostics and therapeutics to predict and overcome multidrug resistance in leukemia and cancer. Dr. Cheng’s lab has been collaborating with Professor Rick Stevens, the Associate Laboratory Director for the Computing, Environment and Life Sciences (CELS) at the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) for artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted drug discovery. By leveraging the Argonne AI supercomputer and their NSUN1/2-targeting functional technologies, the laboratories of Dr. Stevens and Dr. Cheng designed and screened small-molecule compound libraries that target the computationally predicted ligand-binding surfaces/modules in NSUN1 and NSUN2 proteins. They have identified several selective small-molecule inhibitors of NSUN1 and NSUN2 and demonstrated a high efficacy of the NSUN1/2 inhibitors in killing drug-resistant leukemia cells using in vitro cell lines and in vivo syngeneic AML mouse models. Those novel RNA epigenetics-driven technologies and small-molecule inhibitors hold a high-promise for development of novel NSUN1/2/RNA epigenetics-driven novel diagnostics and therapeutics for leukemia and cancer.

Research Interest

Hematology, Hematopathology, Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), Myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN), Acute myeloid leukemia (AML), Hematopoiesis, Genetic and Epigenetic, RNA Epigenetics, RNA cytosine methylation (RNA: m5C),
RNA Cytosine Methyltransferase (RCMT), NSUN1 (NOP2/NOL1), NSUN2, Chromatin structure, Drug resistance.