Heeseon An

Dr. Heeseon An is a Professor at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), leading the Heeseon An Lab within the Chemical Biology Program. Her research focuses on protein degradation mechanisms in health and disease, employing chemical biology, proteomics, and unbiased approaches to uncover novel pathways and therapeutic targets. She holds a BS and MS in Chemistry from Seoul National University, a PhD in Chemistry from Northwestern University, and completed postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School.

Key research areas include:

• Protein Degradation Tools: Developing innovative chemical, biological, and proteomic technologies to study protein turnover.
• Disease Pathways: Identifying degradation pathways altered in diseases and designing small molecule probes for therapy.
• Ribosome Biology: Elucidating roles of ribosomal proteins and ribosome homeostasis using degradation and proteomics tools.

Publications Trends: Recent work highlights mTORC1's role in metabolic regulation via E3 ligases, ribosome inventory dynamics under stress, and mitochondrial quality control mechanisms. Techniques like activity-based probes and quantitative proteomics drive discoveries in enzyme targeting and disease modeling.

• Achievements: Josie Robertson Investigator (2020–2025).

Advising & Teams: Mentors 8 graduate students and postdocs (e.g., Victoria Jordan, Brittany Pham) across the Tri-Institutional PhD Program and Weill Cornell Medicine. Collaborates with labs like the Huse Lab for interdisciplinary projects.

Labs & Affiliations: Affiliated with Gerstner Sloan Kettering Graduate School, fostering translational research in chemical biology.