Dr Jun Yang

Biography

Dr Jun Yang is a Consultant Endocrinologist at Monash Health and a Research Fellow within the Cardiovascular Endocrinology Group at Hudson Institute. Her PhD (2008 – 2013) entitled “Mineralocorticoid receptors (MR): mechanisms of ligand- and tissue-specific activation” identified and characterised novel coregulators of the MR using a novel phage display technique in addition to cell culture work and gene expression assays. This work identified four novel coregulators which interacted with the MR in a context-specific manner. This work has been presented at national and international conferences and was published in the journal, Molecular Endocrinology.

Research Interest

Since completing her PhD, Dr Yang has continued to work on coregulator discovery. In particular, as the Cardiovascular Endocrinology group has shown that MR in macrophages is a key determinant of the macrophage proinflammatory state, she is working to identify macrophage-specific MR coregulators with the ultimate aim of developing a tissue-selective MR modulator that can alter macrophage proinflammatory state without affecting epithelial MR activity. This would offer protection from cardiac fibrosis and failure without causing hyperkalemia.