Chris Edwards | 07/31/2019

Last weekend, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) welcomed Professor of Pharmacology and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada Moshe Szyf to campus. He had been invited to give the 231^st lecture in the SUSTech Lecture Series, in which he gave a fascinating lecture entitled, “The Signature of Liver Cancer in Immune Cells DNA Methylation.” Professor Jiang Xingyu, Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering hosted the lecture.

Professor Moshe Szyf received his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University and did his postdoctoral fellowship in genetics at Harvard University. He holds a James McGill Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics and is the GlaxoSmithKline-Canadian Institute of Health Chair Professor of Pharmacology at McGill University in Canada. Professor Moshe Szyf is a member of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the co-founding director of the Sackler Institute of Epigenetics and Psychophysiology at McGill University and a researcher at the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research Experience-based Brain and Biological Development Program.

In 1994, as a co-founder of the epigenetic Sackler project, Professor Moshe Szyf first proposed the significance of medical transformation in DNA methylation.

He founded Methylgene Inc., the first enterprise in the world to develop epigenetic drugs, in Montreal, Canada. He is the founding editor of the world’s first epigenetics journal, Epigenetics. So far, Professor Moshe Szyf has published more than 280 research papers on the biological role of DNA methylation in a wide range of areas.

In his lecture, Professor Moshe Szyf introduced the role of epigenetics in the development of tumors, the influence of a child’s living environment on their genomes, and advances in epigenetic research. He pointed out that DNA methylation diagnosis is done by early detection. By comparing the differences of genome-wide methylation sites in healthy people, different diseases and patients at different stages of disease, early diagnosis of disease and prediction of stage diagnosis and treatment can be achieved.

Professor Moshe Szyf also elaborated the principles of molecular changes in DNA of host immune cells in HCC. The DNA methylation diagnostic technologies introduced by Moshe Szyf are of great significance to understand the mechanisms of disease and their treatment.

The Q&A session at the end of the lecture was very lively, with many attending students and faculty members asking intelligent questions of Professor Moshe Szyf.