Jean-Pierre Issa, MD, is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Coriell Institute for Medical Research. As such, Dr. Issa leads all aspects of the Coriell Institute in its mission to better understand human health and disease as well as serve as a trusted supplier of high quality biomaterials to the global scientific community.

Dr. Issa is an expert in the study of epigenetics – how the turning on and off of genes affects our health – and to better understanding epigenetic changes in aging and cancerous cells. He has discovered that aging dramatically affects the epigenetic states of human genes and recently published a paper in Nature Communications which shed new light on the long-sought link between calorie-restriction and extended lifespan. He and his team found that age-related changes in a mammal’s epigenome could be slowed by restricted calorie diets, leading to longer lifespans. Dr. Issa has also studied the epigenetics of cancer cells and he has published many studies showing how the information could be used to better understand clinical outcomes after cancer therapies. Finally, Dr. Issa has also been involved in epigenetic based drug discovery and his recently published research in Cell described a new way to reverse epigenetic changes in cancer that could lead to a new drug being tested in patients within the next few years.