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Patrick Moore, MD, MPH

  • Distinguished and American Cancer Society Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics

    Education & Training

  • Graduate School – Stanford University – MS
  • Graduate School – University of Utah – MPhil
  • Graduate School – University of California Berkeley – MPH - Epidemiology
  • Medical School – University of Utah – MD
Research Grants

NIH Grants:  R01, R35

Research Summary

Our lab investigates the viral causes of human malignancy and identifies new cancer-causing viruses using digital transcriptome subtraction. We currently focus on two agents we discovered, KSHV (the viral cause of Kaposi’s sarcoma) and MCV (the viral cause for most Merkel cell carcinomas). Current studies focus on developing new methods to discover cancer viruses, including HTS and mass spec identification of novel virus mRNA or protein, studies on viral circular RNAs and viral targeting of E3 ligases.

Representative Publications
  1. Sun R, Cheng E, Velásquez C, Chang Y, Moore PS. Mitosis-related phosphorylation of the eukaryotic transition suppressor 4E-BP1 and its interaction with eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E (elF4E). J Biol Chem. 2019 Aug 2;294:11840-11852. Doi:10.1074/jbc/RA119.008512.
  2. Harms PW, Harms KL, Moore PS, DeCaprio JA, Nghiem P, Wong MKK, Brownell I. The biology and treatment of Merkel cell carcinoma: current understanding and research priorities. Nature Rev Clin Oncol. Epub 2018 Oct 04. doi:10.1038/s41571-018-0103-2.
  3. Toptan T, Abere B, Nalesnik NA, Swerdlow SH, Ranganathan S, Lee N, Shair SH, Moore PS, Chang Y. Circular DNA tumor viruses make circular RNAs PNAS 2018; 115 (37): E8737-E8745. 
  4. Kwun, H.J; Chang, Y. and Moore, P.S. (2017) Protein-mediated viral latency is a novel mechanism for Merkel cell polyomavirus persistence. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 114: E4040-E4047.
  5. Kwun HJ*, Wendzicki JA*, Moore PS, Chang Y. Merkel Cell Polyomavirus small T Antigen Induces Genome Instability by E3 Ubiquitin Ligase Targeting. Oncogene. 2017.
  6. Chang Y, Moore PS, Weiss RA. Human oncogenic viruses: nature and discovery. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2017 Oct 19;372(1732). pii: 20160264. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2016.0264. PubMed PMID: 28893931; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5597731.
  7. Moore PS, Chang Y. Common Commensal Cancer Viruses. PLoS Pathog. 2017 Jan19;13(1):e1006078. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1006078. eCollection 2017 Jan. Review. PubMed PMID: 28103305; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5245784.