Dr. Jason Cheng is a board-certified hematopathologist and cancer biologist. His clinical focus includes bone marrow failure/aplastic anemia, germline predisposition-associated hematopoietic neoplasms, myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN), MDS/MPN overlap, and acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Dr. Cheng’s research centers on the genetic and epigenetic regulation of hematopoiesis and hematologic malignancies. Specifically, his recent work focuses on developing novel, RNA epigenetics-driven diagnostics and therapeutics to predict and overcome multidrug resistance in MDS, AML, and other cancer subtypes. This work has been supported by funding from the Cancer Research Foundation Young Investigator Award, the American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grants, the Swim Across America/Rush University/University of Chicago ITM Cancer Research Award, the Michael Reese Foundation Bench to Bedside Award, and the Taub Foundation MDS Program.

Dr. Cheng obtained his medical degree from Kunming Medical University in Kunming, China, where he completed a surgical residency. He also completed postgraduate training in Tumor Pathology at the Peking University School of Medicine in Beijing, China. Dr. Cheng then earned his PhD in Pharmacology at UNC-Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) under the guidance of Professor Rudolph L. Juliano, who co-discovered the multidrug-resistant protein/P-glycoprotein with Professor Victor Ling. During his doctoral studies, Dr. Cheng invented a novel "Yeast Zinc Finger Peptide Display" technology to select zinc finger peptides with designed DNA sequence-binding specificities for artificial gene regulation and editing (Cheng and Juliano. US Patent No. 5,869,250). He completed his postdoctoral training in transcription and gene regulation at MSKCC with Professor Mark Ptashne, recipient of the 1997 Lasker Basic Research Award.

Dr. Cheng pursued and completed his AP/CP Residency at the University of Chicago (UChicago), during which he discovered the absence of INI1/SNF5/SMARCB1 expression in renal medullary carcinoma (Cheng, JX, et al. Mod Pathol. 2008; 21:647). Dr. Cheng continued his Hematopathology Fellowship under the mentorship of diagnostic hematology expert Dr. James W. Vardiman, while also conducting research on the genetic networks of hematopoiesis and the PU.1 transcription factor in the lab of Professor Harinder Singh. For his fellowship work conducting the first genome-wide profiling of DNA and histone methylation in MDS using NimbleGen promoter arrays, he received the 2008 Pathologist-in-Training Award and the Paul E. Strandjord Young Investigator Award.

More recently, Dr. Cheng’s lab discovered that specific NSUN family RNA 5-methylcytosine (RNA:m⁵C) methyltransferases—namely NSUN1 (NOP2) and NSUN2—promote cell growth and maintain multidrug resistance in MDS and AML (Cheng, JX, et al. Nat Commun. 2018). Building on this discovery, his lab developed the first-generation RNA Epigenetics-driven Multi-drug/therapy Prediction (REMDP) platform. In collaboration with Professor Rick Stevens at ANL, and by leveraging Argonne AI supercomputers, the lab identified both pan-lineage-effective and lineage-specific novel small-molecule inhibitors of NSUN1/2-associated active structures. These inhibitors effectively kill multidrug-resistant leukemia cells in in vitro cell lines and in vivo syngeneic AML mouse models. This work led to PCT International Patent Application No. PCT/US2024/027873, filed through the UChicago Intellectual Property Office.