Ali Shilatifard

Dr. Ali Shilatifard is Professor of Biochemistry and Pediatrics and the Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, and the Director of Simpson Querrey Institute for Epigenetics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He is a world-renowned biochemist and molecular biologist and a respected expert in the field of transcription and epigenetics, specifically as it relates to cancer biology. Shilatifard has an immense interest in understanding the intricate molecular mechanisms of the regulation of gene expression, the mechanisms that activate or suppress a particular gene’s trait. As a Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral fellow, Shilatifard made a seminal contribution to the field of leukemia biology by identifying the first function of any of the MLL translocation partners as an RNA Polymerase II elongation factor and linking transcription elongation control to cancer pathogenesis. Since then, his laboratory has continued to contribute to the field of epigenetics and its link to cancer biology through many discoveries including the purification of the first histone H3K4 methyltransferase Set1/COMPASS and the MLL/COMPASS family. His studies also identified the Super Elongation Complex (SEC) as a complex containing many of the MLL's translocation partners found in leukemia in one complex regulating the elongation stage of transcription. His fundamental biochemical studies demonstrated a role for chormatin and the elongation stage of transcription as the central mechanisms for cancer development. The Shilatifard lab’s focused studies over the past 30 years have made significant inroads to understanding the cause of childhood leukemia, and his studies are leading to the development of extremely promising target-specific drugs for childhood leukemia and other forms of cancers. Currently, the inhibitors and pathways identified in Shilatifard’s laboratory towards the COMPASS and SEC families are being tested for the treatment of childhood leukemia, brain cancer, bladder cancer, and triple negative breast tumors. For his contributions to our understanding of cancer epigenetics, Dr. Shilatifard has been recognized by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, as the recipient of the Sword of the American Cancer Society, and the AMGEN Award by the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He has been funded through several major grants from the National Institutes of Health, and National Cancer Institute. Shilatifard was selected as an inaugural recipient of the Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Cancer Institute in 2015 and recently renewed this funding until 2030. He has served as a Senior Editor for the journal Science, Editor for Molecular and Cellular Biology and is currently serving as the founding Editor for Science Advances the open access journal of Science. Shilatifard also has served on the Scientific Advisory Boards of Genentech, the Max Planck Society, the Searle Foundation, and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers in Biomedicine.