Cancer Biology Lab

The microenvironment influences cell fate. In this collection of voices at Developmental Cell, researchers from the fields of cancer and regeneration highlight approaches to establish the importance of the microenvironment and discuss future directions to understand the complex interaction between cells and their surrounding environment and how this impacts on disease and regeneration. Carmen has shared her insight on how the microenvironment influences the biology and therapeutic response of liver cancer. Check out the full version: https://www.cell.com/devel.../fulltext/S1534-5807(23)00646-9

Our team employed somatic genome-editing mouse liver cancer models to reveal how genetic landscape affects immune landscape and immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) response. The work is recently published at Journal of Hepatology!

Congratulations to Vincent, David, Dicky, and the team! Amazing teamwork and great discussions along the way! We learnt a lot from each other 💪🏻💪🏻😊😊 keep up the curiosity and passion!

Using mouse liver cancer models based on somatic genome editing to predict immune checkpoint inhibitor responses Hepatocellular carcinoma is highly lethal due to limited therapeutic efficacy. Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) and immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are the only two classes of FDA-approved drugs for advanced HCC patients. TKIs have modest survival benefits. ICIs have remarkable outcomes but onl...

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/advs.202202104

Our recent work is now online at Advanced Science. Liver cancer cells are addicted to glutamine and we showed that dietary restriction of glutamine inhibited liver cancer development. CRISPR library screening and extensive metabolic tracing revealed that liver cancer cells metabolically rerouted through pyruvate metabolism to replenish the TCA cycle when glutamine was withdrawn. Finally we showed that dietary glutamine restriction worked best in combination with inhibitors blocking pyruvate metabolism to truncate the TCA cycle, thereby suppressing liver cancer.

This work was carried by Dr Chunxue Yang now a faculty member at Sun Yat-Sen University💪🏻

Congratulations to our three postgraduate students Noreen, Cerise, and Macus for receiving the Outstanding Poster Presentation Awards in the HKU Faculty of Medicine Research Postgraduate Symposium!

Congratulations to David for being awarded the Li Ka Shing Prize for the best PhD thesis. Congratulations to Jacinth for receiving HKU PhD Fellowship!

Happy graduation to David and Jacinth!

Summer gathering. Happy birthday to our former teammate, Lynna. Thank you so much for visiting us ♥️！ A warm welcome to Jacinth for joining our lab for her PhD study!

Wong Lab