Rate My Professor John Strouboulis

John Strouboulis is Professor and Chair in Molecular Erythropoiesis in the Department of Haematology, Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine at King’s College London, appointed in 2018. He leads the Red Cell Haematology research group within the Comprehensive Cancer Centre, School of Cancer & Pharmaceutical Sciences, specializing in the transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of red blood cell differentiation, or erythropoiesis. Employing proteomic, genomic, and functional approaches, his research has elucidated mechanisms of human globin gene regulation in vivo and the functions of key transcription factors during erythropoiesis. In collaboration with clinical colleagues and human geneticists at King’s College Hospital and Guy’s Hospital, he develops translational programs targeting sickle cell disease and other red cell disorders, aiming to improve diagnostics and novel treatments. His laboratory investigates stress responses in erythroid cells, fetal hemoglobin-expressing red blood cells, and gene editing applications in haematological conditions.

Strouboulis earned his PhD at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research in London, studying the developmental regulation of the human β-globin locus, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health focusing on Polycomb Group proteins. He progressed as a Marie Curie Fellow and senior staff scientist in the Department of Cell Biology at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands; senior group leader at the Alexander Fleming Biomedical Sciences Research Center in Athens, Greece; and Research Professor at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology-FORTH in Heraklion, Crete. He has held EMBO and HFSP postdoctoral fellowships and a Wellcome Senior Research Fellowship. Current research is funded by the Medical Research Council, European Union, Action Medical Research, Diamond Blackfan Anemia Foundation, and British Society for Haematology. Notable publications include 'Methylated DNA and MeCP2 recruit histone deacetylase to repress transcription' (Nature Genetics, 1998), 'Development of hematopoietic stem cell activity in the mouse embryo' (Immunity, 1994), 'Efficient biotinylation and single-step purification of tagged transcription factors in mammalian cells and transgenic mice' (PNAS, 2003), and recent contributions such as 'Gene editing efficiencies and hematopoietic stem cell fitness in sickle cell disease: A balancing act' (Molecular Therapy, 2024) and 'Reduced GATA1 levels are associated with ineffective erythropoiesis in sickle cell anemia' (Haematologica, 2024). His work has garnered over 10,000 citations, influencing haematology and molecular biology fields.