Joan Chang

Dr Joan Chang (ORCID 0000-0002-7283-9759) graduated from Imperial College London, having studied Biochemistry with a year in Industry/Research working on hypoxia and osteoarthritis. She received her PhD under the tutelage of Prof Janine Erler, from the Institute of Cancer Research (University of London), on the effects of the collagen cross-linking enzyme LOXL2 in cancerous and normal breast epithelial cells. She then did a short postdoc with Prof Andrew Dudley at UNC Chapel Hill, on how adipocytes influence the tumour microenvironment and drive cancer progression. In 2016, Joan moved to University of Manchester to join Prof Karl Kadler’s group, where she rediscovered her passion in extracellular matrix biology, in particular collagen-I, and how it is regulated in tendon. During that time, with colleagues, she made seminal discoveries on the circadian control of collagen homeostasis, and the role of endocytic recycling in collagen fibrillogenesis, which is implicated in lung fibrosis. In 2022, Joan started her own lab as a UKRI MRC Career Development Research Fellow. Her lab is focussed on the intra- and inter-cellular regulation of collagen-I, including how circadian and immune cells influence these processes. She is also developing “living matrix tools”, e.g. endogenously-tagged collagen-I mouse models, to understand collagen dynamics.