Jindan Yu, MD, PhD
Photo: Jindan Yu

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Elected 2024

Jindan Yu, MD, PhD is the Fray F. Marshall Chair, Vice Chair for Research of the Department of Urology, Lead for Cancer Genomics of the Department of Human Genetics and Director of the Prostate/GU Cancer Program at the Emory University Winship Cancer Institute. She is internationally known for her work on genomic and epigenomic analysis of mechanisms of prostate cancer progression to the lethal castration resistance and the neuroendocrine phenotype. Dr. Yu received her MD from Beijing Medical University and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan. Highly successful postdoctoral training under HHMI investigator Arul Chinnaiyan, led to a K99/R00 award on the epigenetics on prostate cancer. She was recruited to Northwestern in 2009 where she rapidly rose to become a tenured professor in 2017, a leader in the Northwestern Lurie Cancer Center, a co-leader of the cancer concentration of the PhD program and a leader in the Northwestern GU SPORE. Dr. Yu was recruited to Emory University in 2023 in recognition of her leadership in prostate cancer research. Critical contributions from her laboratory include: 1) characterizing EZH2 as an epigenetic and non-epigenetic regulator of prostate cancer, 2) elucidating the roles of androgen receptor (AR) and its cofactors in transcription, 3) defining the dual roles of FOXA1 in reprogramming AR and suppressing SLUG, TGF-β and IL-8 signaling, and 4) linking metastasis suppression by HOXB13 to inhibition of lipogenesis. Dr. Yu is an Associate Editor for multiple journals, including Oncogene, has served as a grant reviewer for the DOD, NIH, and other agencies. She has been continuously funded by the DOD, NIH and highly competitive foundations and has led several large, collaborative projects. Her pioneering work on the genomics and bioinformatic analyses of prostate cancer has led to 90 research articles with >22,000 and an H-index of 58.