James Herman's Biography

James Herman, Professor, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions

James Herman joined the faculty of the Department of Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1996 and is currently a Professor in the Division of Cancer Biology. He received his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University in 1989 and completed his residency training in internal medicine at Duke University. He completed his clinical training in Medical Oncology in medical oncology at Johns Hopkins. The Herman lab explores the importance and clinical utility of epigenetic changes in cancer. In earlier work, they demonstrated silencing of tumor suppressor genes associated with DNA methylation and developed a simple and sensitive method, methylation- specific PCR, for the detection of methylation changes. It is the most widely used method for the study of methylation changes in cancer. This approach, and others developed in the lab, is now used to identify new genes that are silenced in cancer. The Herman lab also examines methylation events in pre-invasive lesions associated with solid tumors to understand tumor development and progression and to develop these findings into early detection markers. They have also explored the use of gene methylation as predictive and prognostic markers in cancer. Both in the lab and in a phase 1 trial, studies to reverse gene silencing in patients with cancer are being studied.