Dr. Q. Ping Dou is Professor of Oncology, Pharmacology and Pathology, Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI, USA. Dr. Dou obtained his B.S. degree in chemistry from Shandong University (PR China) in 1981, Ph.D. degree in chemistry from Rutgers University in 1988, and postdoctoral training at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School from 1988 to 1993 (Mentor: Arthur B. Pardee). Dr. Dou has extensive experience in the fields of drug discovery, chemoprevention, natural products, proteasome inhibitors, cell cycle and apoptosis. He has published ~200 peer-reviewed research and review articles, many of those in journals of the highest quality, and also holds ~10 patents. He has extensive experience in professional service, including various study sections, several advisory and editorial boards, and committees. He has mentored numerous graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and junior faculty.
The main objective in Dr. Dou’s laboratory is aimed at discovering molecular targets of natural products in pre-clinical studies, followed by validation in targeted cancer intervention clinical trials. Dr. Dou's laboratory is one of the first to report that proteasome inhibitors rapidly induce tumor cell apoptosis, selectively activate the cell death program in oncogene-transformed, but not normal or untransformed cells, and are able to trigger apoptotic death in human cancer cells that are resistant to various anticancer agents. Dr. Dou's laboratory has shown that some tea polyphenols, medicinal compounds and metal complexes potently and specifically inhibit the chymotrypsin-like activity of the proteasome in vitro and in vivo. His laboratory has established, for the first time, a computational molecular model that shows how these compounds bind and target the proteasome chymotrypsin subunit. This innovative computational model has been validated by comparison of predicted and actual activities of these compounds, either naturally occurring or rationally designed and synthesized.
