John Zone, MD, is founder and director of the Melanoma Program at Huntsman Cancer Institute and professor and chair of the Department of Dermatology at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

Zone established Huntsman Cancer Institute's Melanoma Program because of the organization's unique position to expand the understanding of this life-threatening form of skin cancer. Investigators at Huntsman Cancer Institute have an invaluable resource in Utah's large families willing to participate in research. Additionally, Utah has an above-average incidence of melanoma. In an earlier important finding, Zone and a team of researchers at the University of Utah and other institutions discovered p16, a gene that increases melanoma susceptibility. A central focus of investigators in the Melanoma Program today is the search for other genetic factors that may be passed from one generation to another.

Zone earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame and his medical degree from the State University of New York at Syracuse in 1971. He served an internship and residency in internal medicine at Syracuse, a residency in dermatology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and a fellowship in dermatological immunology at Buffalo General Hospital. Upon completion of his training, he joined the University of Utah School of Medicine faculty in 1978.