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Prof Yang Shi, Professor of Epigenetics at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, has previously worked at Harvard Medical School. His interests lie in identifying key epigenetic regulators of cancer, determining their mechanism of action and providing the conceptual basis for translating these basic findings to the clinic. Yang and his group discovered the first histone methyl eraser, LSD1, in 2004 and have demonstrated that histone methylation is dynamically regulated.
At NDM, Yang’s team focuses primarily on two cancers, acute myeloid leukaemia and diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, where epigenetics have been shown to play a crucial role in the maintenance of a poorly differentiated state.