Michele Pagano

Dr. Pagano is the chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and the May Ellen and Gerald Jay Ritter professor of Oncology at the New York University School of Medicine. Since 2008, he is also an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Pagano received his doctorate in Medicine and a specialty diploma in Molecular Endocrinology in 1990 from the University of Naples Federico II University in his native Napoli, Italy. He was subsequently a post-doctoral fellow at EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany from 1990 to 1992, and at Mitotix Inc., a biotech company that he cofounded and that pioneered the concept of CDK inhibitors as anti-cancer agents from 1992 to 1996. He joined the NYU School of Medicine in September 1996 and was tenured in 2003. Dr. Pagano has received many prestigious grants, including a Merit Award from the National Cancer Institute (2006-2017) and a NIGMS MIRA Award in recognition of his outstanding achievements in cell and cancer biology. Dr. Pagano has published more than 200 leading papers, has been issued 7 patents, and has been invited to present more than 180 seminars at conferences, universities, and research institutions in the U.S. and abroad. Dr. Pagano’s research focuses on the ubiquitylating enzymes that control cell proliferation and how deregulation of these machineries contribute to malignant transformation. His long-term goal is to help develop new anticancer therapies. In particular, his laboratory is working towards the identification of small molecule glues able to promote the proteolysis of untargetable oncoproteins.