Professor
Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology
Faculty of Medicine
University of Toronto

Dr. Burton Yang earned his Ph.D. degree from the University of Manitoba in 1992, followed by a postdoctoral training in Manitoba Institute of Cell Biology. He moved Harvard Medical School for a second postdoctoral training in 1993. Dr. Yang took a position as a scientist in Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and an assistant professor at the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto in 1995. He was promoted to associate professor in 2001 and professor in 2007.

Dr. Yang is currently a Career Investigator for Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario. Dr. Yang’s group has been working on the extracellular matrix, especially in the area of proteoglycan. Dr. Yang’s group undertakes the approaches of RNA interference including siRNAs and microRNAs to study the roles of matrix molecules in angiogenesis. Dr. Yang has developed a system to study the role of microRNA in tumor growth and angiogenesis in vitro and in vivo. Three approaches are taken to study miRNA function in transgenic mice expressing miR-17, versican 3’UTR, which can bind endogenous miRNAs and relieve mRNAs for translation, and anti-miR-378 construct.

Topic of Talk: Prof. Burton will be talking on circular RNA biology