|
|
Research Interests
The Chen-Liu lab aims to understand the biology of cancer and identify new therapeutic targets for treatment. We develop and apply precision cancer models, genome editing, organoid culturing, multi-omics analyses, bioinformatics, and clinical studies to build a full technique chain from basic cancer studies to clinic oncology practice. We are proud of being a diverse and collaborating group of students, postdoc, physicians, staff, and faculty. Our current research focus on:
1. Precision cancer models
Taking advantage of recent progress in cancer genomics, genome editing, and organoid culturing, we develop a multiplexing strategy to create primary, orthotopic, and drivers-defined cancer models in mice. These precision cancer models can reproduce the whole process of tumorigenesis and recapitulate the pathology of human malignancies. So far, we have generated such precision animal models for lung cancer (NSCLC and SCLC), esophageal cancers (ESCC and EAC), gastric cancers, bladder cancer, nasopharyngeal cancer, and blood cancers (AML and lymphoma).
2. Tumor initiation and progression
With these models, we investigate the detailed molecular mechanisms underlying tumorigenesis. We are especially interested in potential functional roles of human cancer-associated copy number variations (CNVs), a very much but less studied feature of human cancers. We have validated chromosome 17p loss as a driver for lymphoma and leukemia (nature 2016). We identify new tumor suppressors and oncogenes on CNVs, such as ALOX15B and PHF23 on chromosome 17p (nature 2016 and cancer discovery 2021) and KMT2C on chromosome 7q (cancer cell 2014). Interestingly, many of these genes are epigenetic factors. We explore the detailed molecular mechanisms of the epigenetic reprogramming in tumorigenesis.
3. Acquired chemo- and immunotherapy resistance
We apply our models and collaborate with physicians from the West China Hospital to dissect the molecular mechanisms underlying acquired resistance for cancer treatments. Ongoing projects includes studies on the acquired resistance to cisplatin-based chemotherapies in SCLC and MIBC and to immunotherapies in various types of cancers.
Selected publications
→
1