Sheue-yann Cheng
Sheue-yann Cheng is a Taiwanese-American molecular geneticist who helped create mouse models to study diseases caused by thyroid hormone receptor mutations. She is a senior investigator and head of the Gene Regulation Section at the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
Education and early career
- BS from National Taiwan University (1961)
- PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry from UCSF Medical Center (1966); dissertation: Nonclassical Steroid Analogues
- Postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
Career at NCI
- Joined NCI as a principal investigator (1979)
- Promoted to gene regulation section chief (1991)
- Became senior investigator (2016)
Professional service
- Regular member of NIH Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology Study Section
- Advisor for Howard Hughes Medical Institute-NIH Research Scholars
- Women’s scientist advisor at the NCI Center for Cancer Research
- Editorial roles: associate editor of Thyroid, associate editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Cancer Research, editor for Frontier-Endocrinology-Thyroid, and board member of several journals
Key contributions
- Pioneered mouse models to study how thyroid hormone receptor mutations cause disease
- Researched hypothyroidism and resistance to thyroid hormone, showing that different receptor subtypes cause different human diseases
- Explored the role of thyroid hormone receptors in cancer
- Developed mouse models of metastatic follicular thyroid cancer and anaplastic thyroid cancer
- Focuses on signaling pathways and molecular targets in thyroid cancer to guide potential treatments
Awards and honors
- NIH Merit Award
- Scientific Achievement Award from the Chinese Medical and Health Association
- Charles Harkin Award, NCI
- Sidney H. Ingbar Distinguished Lectureship Award, American Thyroid Association
- Abbott Thyroid Research Clinical Fellowship Mentor Award, Endocrine Society
- John B. Stanbury Thyroid Pathophysiological Medal, American Thyroid Association
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 03:15 (CET).