Dr. Evgeny Deforzh | Cancer | Best Researcher Award
Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard University | United States
Dr. Evgeny Deforzh is a molecular biologist whose work focuses on the regulation of RNA, microRNAs, chromatin dynamics, and their roles in cancer and neurological disease. After earning his B.S. and M.S. in Biology from Saint Petersburg State University and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Paris‑Saclay University, he completed postdoctoral research as a Research Fellow and subsequently served as Instructor in Neurology at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. His peer‑reviewed contributions include insights into how WEE1 regulators switch roles in cell cycle control, protection of cyclin mRNAs from translational repression, the impact of glioblastoma‑derived extracellular vesicles on astrocyte transformation, and the nuclear modulation of splicing by oncogenic microRNAs. More recently, his work has elucidated promoter/enhancer RNA regulation of super‑enhancers, and miRNA pathways as therapeutic targets in gliomas and meningiomas. To date, Dr. Deforzh has published ~15–20 independent original research articles (first‑, co‑first, or senior‑author) with many additional co‐authored papers. His publications have been cited in the literature ~800‑1,200 times, giving him an approximate h‑index of 12–15. His research has advanced understanding of RNA regulatory networks in cancer and offers potential translational pathways for diagnostics and therapy.
Featured Publications:
Zeng, A., Wei, Z., Rabinovsky, R., Jun, H. J., El Fatimy, R., Deforzh, E., & Arora, R. (2020). Glioblastoma-derived extracellular vesicles facilitate transformation of astrocytes via reprogramming oncogenic metabolism. iScience, 23(8), 101420.
Deforzh, E., Uhlmann, E. J., Das, E., Galitsyna, A., Arora, R., Saravanan, H., … (2022). Promoter and enhancer RNAs regulate chromatin reorganization and activation of miR-10b/HOXD locus, and neoplastic transformation in glioma. Molecular Cell, 82(10), 1894–1908.e5.
El Fatimy, R., Zhang, Y., Deforzh, E., Ramadas, M., Saravanan, H., Wei, Z., … (2022). A nuclear function for an oncogenic microRNA as a modulator of snRNA and splicing. Molecular Cancer, 21(1), 17.
Poller, W., Sahoo, S., Hajjar, R., Landmesser, U., & Krichevsky, A. M. (2023). Exploration of the noncoding genome for human-specific therapeutic targets—Recent insights at molecular and cellular level. Cells, 12(22), 2660.
Deforzh, E., Vargas, T. R., Kropp, J., Vandamme, M., Pinna, G., & Polesskaya, A. (2016). IMP-3 protects the mRNAs of cyclins D1 and D3 from GW182/AGO2-dependent translational repression. International Journal of Oncology, 49(6), 2578–2588.
Kratassiouk, G., Pritchard, L. L., Cuvellier, S., Vislovukh, A., Meng, Q., … (2016). The WEE1 regulators CPEB1 and miR-15b switch from inhibitor to activators at G2/M. Cell Cycle, 15(5), 667–677.