Duojia Pan

Biosketch

Duojia Pan, PhD is currently Bashour Distinguished Chair of Physiology at UT Southwestern Medical Center, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from Peking University in China (1988), PhD in Biological Chemistry from UCLA (1993), and postdoctoral training in Genetics with Gerald Rubin at UC Berkeley (1993-1998). He began his independent academic career at UT Southwestern Medical Center in 1998 and was recruited to Johns Hopkins Medical School in 2004, where he became an HHMI Investigator (2008). In 2016, Dr. Pan returned to UT Southwestern Medical Center as Chair of the Department of Physiology. He received the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research (2013) and the Passano Award (2022), and was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2012) and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2023).

Research Interests

Dr. Pan has a long-standing interest in understanding the molecular mechanisms of growth control and tissue homeostasis and their implications in human disease. His laboratory tackles this question using a combination of Drosophila and mouse genetics, biochemistry, and cell biology approaches. Much of his work over the past 20 years has focused on the Hippo signaling pathway, a fundamental mechanism that regulates tissue growth in animals ranging from insects to mammals. His laboratory systematically decoded the key molecular events in the Hippo pathway in Drosophila and established its conserved role in mammalian tissue growth, regeneration and tumorigenesis. Besides the Hippo pathway, his laboratory also elucidated the molecular function of the Tsc1 and Tsc2 tumor suppressor genes, linking Tsc1/Tsc2 to Rheb and mTOR signaling. This work provided the molecular basis for the use of mTOR inhibitors in the treatment of Tuberous Sclerosis. Dr. Pan’s laboratory continues to apply forward genetic screens in Drosophila to discover novel growth regulators and pathways.