Research Area: Cancer Signalling Pathways

Location: Singapore

Wanjin Hong graduated from Xiamen University and was one of a few hundred Chinese students chosen for further graduate training in USA via the CUSBEA program. He received his PhD from the State University of New York (SUNY Buffalo), and was a postdoctoral fellow there before joining Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) at A*STAR in Singapore as a Principal Investigator. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1995 and Professor in 1998. He served as the Acting Director of IMCB during 2001-2004 and the Executive Director of IMCB during 2011-2023. he is currently the Chief Business Development Officer of Biomedical Research Council (BMRC) and Research Director of IMCB at A*STAR.

Prof Hong contributed significantly to the understanding of membrane trafficking (targeting motifs in the secretory and endocytic pathways, SNARE, small GTPases, and PX-domain sorting nexins) and the Hippo pathway in cancer (TAZ as an oncogene, structural characterization of YAP/TAZ/Vgll1-TEAD complex, and discovery of druggable pocket of TEAD). His publications have over 30,000 citations with h-index of 97 according to Google Scholar. His awards in Singapore include The President’s Science and Technology Medal in 2022, National Science Award (now President’s Science Award) in 1999 and Public Administration Medal (Silver) in 2014. He is a Fellow of Singapore National Academy of Science since 2022. He is on the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science Signaling (An AAAS Journal), and the Editorial Boards of Cell & Bioscience and TRAFFIC.

Webpage: https://medicine.nus.edu.sg/bch/faculty/hong-wanjin/; https://www.a-star.edu.sg/imcb/imcb-research/scientific-programmes/cancer-signaling-therapies/wanjin-hong