J. Keith Joung

J. Keith Joung is an American pathologist and molecular biologist who holds the Robert B. Colvin Endowed Chair in Pathology[1] at Massachusetts General Hospital and is Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School.[2] He is a leading figure in the field of genome editing and has pioneered the development of designer nucleases and sensitive off-target detection methods.[3]

Education

In 1987, Joung graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in biochemical sciences.[4] He received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and a Ph.D. in genetics from Harvard University.[5]

Career

Joung is most well known for his work in genome editing and has contributed to the development of designer nucleases through protein engineering and assays for off-target detection.[6][7][8] In the mid-2000s, his research was focused on creating zinc finger nuclease tools for biological research and gene therapy.[6] He was the leader and founder of the Zinc Finger Consortium and co-authored a study on Oligomerized Pool Engineering (OPEN), a publicly available strategy for rapidly constructing multi-finger arrays.[9][10]

More recently, he contributed to the development of TAL effector, TALENs, and the RNA-guided CRISPR/Cas9 system. In addition to demonstrating the use of the CRISPR/Cas9 system in vivo through the zebrafish model,[11] he pioneered the creation of tools such as GUIDE-seq and CIRCLE-seq to detect nuclease off-targets within the genome.[7][12] In 2016, his group became one of the first to report engineered high-fidelity CRISPR/Cas9 nucleases (HF1) with no detectable off-target effects.[13]

He is one of the scientific co-founders of Editas Medicine, along with Jennifer Doudna, Feng Zhang, George Church, and David Liu.[14] He is also a co-founder of Beam Therapeutics and Verve Therapeutics.[15][16] He received the Ho-Am Prize in Medicine in 2022 [17] and the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy Outstanding Achievement Award in 2023, the society's highest honor.[18]

He has an h-index of 85 according to Semantic Scholar.[19]

References

1. "Keith Joung, MD, PhD, was recognized as the inaugural incumbent of the Robert B. Colvin Endowed Chair in Patholog".
2. "Joung Laboratory - Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA". massgeneral.org. Retrieved 2016-11-19.
3. Nair, Prashant (3 May 2016). "QnAs with Jennifer Doudna". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113 (18): 4884–4886. Bibcode:2016PNAS..113.4884N. doi:10.1073/pnas.1605008113. PMC 4983843. PMID 27092008. S2CID 8873309.
4. "J Keith Joung MD PhD | Advisory Council | ASGCT - American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy | ASGCT - American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy". Archived from the original on 2019-03-06. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
5. "Center for Computational and Integrative Biology".
6. Wade, Nicholas (28 December 2009). "In New Way to Edit DNA, Hope for Treating Disease". The New York Times.
7. Tsai, Shengdar Q.; Zheng, Zongli; Nguyen, Nhu T.; Liebers, Matthew; Topkar, Ved V.; Thapar, Vishal; Wyvekens, Nicolas; Khayter, Cyd; Iafrate, A. John; Le, Long P.; Aryee, Martin J.; Joung, J. Keith (February 2015). "GUIDE-seq enables genome-wide profiling of off-target cleavage by CRISPR-Cas nucleases". Nature Biotechnology. 33 (2): 187–197. doi:10.1038/nbt.3117. PMC 4320685. PMID 25513782.
   • "New method identifies genome-wide off-target cleavage sites of CRISPR-Cas nucleases". ScienceDaily (Press release). December 16, 2014.
8. "CRISPR Researchers Develop Highly Sensitive Method for Identification of Off-Target Effects in Vivo". 12 September 2018.
9. "The Zinc Finger Consortium | Consortium Members". zincfingers.org. Retrieved 2016-11-19.
10. Maeder, Morgan L.; Thibodeau-Beganny, Stacey; Osiak, Anna; Wright, David A.; Anthony, Reshma M.; Eichtinger, Magdalena; Jiang, Tao; Foley, Jonathan E.; Winfrey, Ronnie J.; Townsend, Jeffrey A.; Unger-Wallace, Erica; Sander, Jeffry D.; Müller-Lerch, Felix; Fu, Fengli; Pearlberg, Joseph; Göbel, Carl; Dassie, Justin P.; Pruett-Miller, Shondra M.; Porteus, Matthew H.; Sgroi, Dennis C.; Iafrate, A. John; Dobbs, Drena; McCray, Paul B.; Cathomen, Toni; Voytas, Daniel F.; Joung, J. Keith (July 2008). "Rapid 'Open-Source' Engineering of Customized Zinc-Finger Nucleases for Highly Efficient Gene Modification". Molecular Cell. 31 (2): 294–301. doi:10.1016/j.molcel.2008.06.016. PMC 2535758. PMID 18657511.
11. Hwang, Woong Y.; Fu, Yanfang; Reyon, Deepak; Maeder, Morgan L.; Tsai, Shengdar Q.; Sander, Jeffry D.; Peterson, Randall T.; Yeh, J.-R. Joanna; Joung, J. Keith (March 2013). "Efficient genome editing in zebrafish using a CRISPR-Cas system". Nature Biotechnology. 31 (3): 227–229. doi:10.1038/nbt.2501. PMC 3686313. PMID 23360964.
12. Tsai, Shengdar Q.; Nguyen, Nhu T.; Malagon-Lopez, Jose; Topkar, Ved V.; Aryee, Martin J.; Joung, J. Keith (June 2017). "CIRCLE-seq: a highly sensitive in vitro screen for genome-wide CRISPR–Cas9 nuclease off-targets". Nature Methods. 14 (6): 607–614. doi:10.1038/nmeth.4278. PMC 5924695. PMID 28459458.
13. Kleinstiver, Benjamin P.; Pattanayak, Vikram; Prew, Michelle S.; Tsai, Shengdar Q.; Nguyen, Nhu T.; Zheng, Zongli; Joung, J. Keith (January 2016). "High-fidelity CRISPR–Cas9 nucleases with no detectable genome-wide off-target effects". Nature. 529 (7587): 490–495. Bibcode:2016Natur.529..490K. doi:10.1038/nature16526. PMC 4851738. PMID 26735016.
14. "Editas Medicine to develop new class of genome editing therapeutics". 25 November 2013.
15. "FOUNDERS AND INVENTORS". Beam Therapeutics. Retrieved 14 December 2022.
16. "About Us". Verve Therapeutics. Retrieved 5 July 2021.
17. 이인준 (31 May 2022). "32회 삼성호암상…오용근 포스텍 교수 등 6인 수상". Newsis (in Korean). Retrieved 3 June 2022.
18. https://asgct.org/publications/news/april-2023/am23-awards-announcement. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
19. "J. Joung". Semantic Scholar. Retrieved 14 December 2022.