Contact: Lourdes Torres
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Dr. Moon-shong Tang Joins NYU School of Medicine
Eric Moon-shong Tang, Ph.D., a prominent molecular biologist whose research established a direct genetic link between smoking and lung cancer, has joined the faculty of New York University School of Medicine as Professor of Environmental Medicine. A native of Taiwan, Dr. Tang was previously Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Smithville.
Dr. Tang is a prolific author and his research has earned him wide recognition. In 1997, Texas Monthly magazine selected him as one of the state's leading citizens and the Harvard Health Letter, published by Harvard University Medical School, cited his research as one of the top ten advances of 1996.
Dr. Tang pioneered a technique that enables researchers to pinpoint the exact sites where DNA damage occurs due to environmental carcinogens. The technique grew out of his long interest in how DNA sequences and gene activity affect environmental carcinogens such as ultraviolet radiation that damage DNA. It provided the irrefutable proof that smoking causes cancer.
In a widely cited study published three years ago in the journal Science, Dr. Tang's team linked a powerful carcinogen found in cigarette smoke to mutations in a gene called P53. This gene, which serves as a tumor suppressor, puts the breaks on the runaway growth characterizing cancer cells. More than 50% of all cancers, and 70% of lung cancers, involve mutations in the P53 gene.
The researchers introduced the carcinogen benzo(a)pyrene diol epoxide (BPDE) to human lung cells and observed its effects with the new mapping technique. Dr. Tang and his collaborator, Gerd Pfeifer of the Beckman Institute in Duarte, California, found that the carcinogen preferentially bound to the P53 gene at three so-called mutational hot spots, areas especially vulnerable to mutation. By showing that the hot spots were the precise sites where the carcinogen bound most strongly, the research explained the link between a known cancer-forming substance in cigarettes and lung cancer.
Dr. Tang intends to continue his groundbreaking work with environmental carcinogens and human cancers at NYU's Nelson Institute of Environmental Health in Tuxedo Park, N.Y. He will study how components of cigarette smoke contribute to prostate cancer and cancers of the aerodigestive system and will search for the fingerprints of other carcinogens implicated in cancer.
Dr. Tang is a member of the American Society of Microbiology, the American Association for Cancer Research and the American Society for the Advancement of Science. He has served on review committees for the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Environmental Health, and the National Cancer Institute.
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