Jun Qi, PhD

Dr. Jun Qi is an Associate Professor in Medicine at Cancer Biology Department in Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School.  Dr. Qi received his BS from Fudan University in China, and obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry from University of Michigan in 2006, and completed his postdoctoral training at MIT in 2009.  Both his Ph.D. and postdoctoral studies have been focused on the total synthesis of natural compounds and the novel synthetic methodology development.  Dr. Qi joined Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Dr. Bradner’s lab at in 2009, and focused his research on design and synthesis small molecule inhibitors targeting the gene regulation pathway for cancer therapy.  Dr. Qi has discovered a small molecule JQ1 that inhibits one of the bromodomain subfamily, BET bromodomain.  This discovery has been utilized to understand the role of epigenetic reader in variety of diseases, such as cancer, heart failure.  This small molecule was further optimized by Dr. Qi to clinical candidate, which started clinic trial recently.  Dr. Qi has also led the effort of developing new technologies, such as Chem-Seq.  Dr. Qi joined faculty members in Cancer Biology Department at DFCI in June, 2016, and will continue his effort to develop a platform consistent with chemistry, medicinal chemistry and chemical biology to understand the fundamental roles of epigenetic writer, reader and eraser in different diseases, specifically in cancers.