Chuan He

Chuan He has made transformative contributions to understanding the biochemistry of DNA and RNA modifications in cancer, particularly the role of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) as both a functional epigenetic mark and a cancer biomarker. His laboratory developed sensitive chemical labeling methods for genome-wide 5hmC mapping that revealed global 5hmC loss as a hallmark of many cancer types. He demonstrated that 5hmC profiling in cell-free DNA provides a highly sensitive approach for cancer detection and classification. His parallel work on m6A RNA modification has expanded the epigenetic landscape beyond DNA to include epitranscriptomic regulation of oncogene expression.