Affiliation: National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Center for Cancer Research, Laboratory of Genome Integrity

Dr. Dali Zong is a senior scientist in the Laboratory of Genome Integrity headed by Dr. André Nussenzweig at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. The primary focus of his research is to elucidate how dysregulation of cellular DNA double-strand break repair pathways drive tumorigenesis and identify therapeutic opportunities to target vulnerabilities specific to repair-deficient cells. His recent work has led to the breakthrough discovery that a heterozygous mutation in the breast/ovarian cancer susceptibility gene BRCA1 can force cells to rely on an alternative repair pathway to preserve genome stability. He is an expert in various biochemical, cell biological and genetics/genomics tools, as well as diverse molecular imaging techniques. Prior to joining the NIH, Dr. Zong completed his Ph.D. training at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, where he also received his MSc in Biomedical Sciences.