Dr. Zhang is studying a unique three-stranded nucleic acid structure, called an R-loop, to understand its role in cancer development and find ways to target and control its formation. R-loops consist of a DNA-RNA hybrid and a displaced strand of DNA. R-loops occur frequently in human genomes, and while they play an important role in blood cell differentiation and immune cell function, they can also interfere with DNA repair and promote genome instability, giving rise to leukemia. However, the dynamic nature of R-loop formation hampers the detection of this structure in a small cell sample. To address this challenge, Dr. Zhang is developing novel techniques to map R-loops in normal blood stem cells versus blood cancer cells at single-cell resolution. He also plans to investigate leukemia-specific R-loops in vitro and in vivo with CRISPR-based screening techniques. The goal of his research is to aid development of therapeutic interventions for R-loop-related gene expression dysregulation in cancer, especially leukemia. Dr. Zhang received his PhD from Ohio State University, Columbus, his MS from University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, and his BS from Chongqing University, Chongqing.

Thalidomide derivatives are a mainstay of treatment in multiple myeloma, a cancer of white blood cells called plasma cells. However, around one in ten individuals treated with thalidomide derivatives for multiple myeloma will develop a blood clot, which can be life-threatening. It is critical to determine how to continue to use thalidomide derivatives to kill myeloma cells, while working to understand why these drugs increase the likelihood of clotting. Thalidomide derivatives work by degrading proteins important to myeloma cell growth; Dr. Zon [The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research Physician-Scientist] hypothesizes that these drugs could similarly lead to the degradation of proteins that prevent blood clotting. She is comprehensively evaluating what factors promote blood clots patients with multiple myeloma, with the goal of developing more targeted medications to prevent blood clots and improve treatment outcomes in blood cancer patients.