Speaker Profile
Peter

Peter PhD, DSc

Genetics, Oncology
Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States of America

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Peter A. Jones, Ph.D. D.Sc., is research director and chief scientific officer of the Van Andel Research Institute (VARI). He also serves as a distinguished professor and as head of the Laboratory for Cancer Epigenomics.

Born, raised and educated in the former Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Jones received his doctorate in biochemistry from the University of London in 1973. He joined the University of Southern California in 1977, where he attained the rank of professor in 1985 and became director of the cancer center in 1993.

Jones' research concerns how cancer-related genes become heritably silenced during carcinogenesis, resulting in functional inactivation. The primary focus of his research is on DNA cytosine methylation and how this process interacts with chromatin structure to ensure heritable silencing. He is also interested in translating basic scientific discoveries into clinical treatments, specifically for people with bladder cancer. He and his colleagues are working on drugs that can reverse silencing and turn genes back on again, and designing strategies where this kind of epigenetic therapy can be applied to the treatment of human cancers
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