Nan Zhou
Oncology researcher at the First Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University and first author of a 2026 study linking a DNA-demethylating enzyme to PI3K-AKT-mTOR activation in lung adenocarcinoma
Department of Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University (at the time of the study, 2026)
Genes can be silenced by methyl groups attached to their DNA, and enzymes called TET remove those marks to turn genes back on. Nan Zhou's 2026 study, with Y. Wang as senior author, found that in lung adenocarcinoma, the most common type of lung cancer, TET1 strips the methyl marks from the control region of the MRPS17 gene. MRPS17 normally helps build the protein-making machinery inside mitochondria, and its overproduction in tumour cells switched on PI3K-AKT-mTOR signalling, a growth pathway, and made the cells divide, move and invade more.
Reducing MRPS17 pushed cancer cells into apoptosis, programmed cell death, and slowed tumour growth in cell culture and in animal experiments. The study ties an epigenetic switch to the mTOR growth pathway in one cancer type; it has not been tested in patients.
PubMed lists Nan Zhou at the Department of Oncology of the First Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University. Because the name is common, no wider publication record is attributed here.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | M | TET1-mediated DNA demethylation and transcription activation of MRPS17 induces lung adenocarcinoma through PI3K-AKT-mTOR pathway. ZHOU2026 First author: showed that TET1-driven demethylation raises MRPS17 in lung adenocarcinoma, activating PI3K-AKT-mTOR and promoting tumour growth. |
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