Lab Members
(Joined the lab in 2019)
Ko-Chien (KC) Chen received her B.Sc. from the University of British Columbia and received her M.Sc. degree from National Taiwan University. After graduation, Ko-Chien worked as a research assistant investigating the role of exosomes in the tumor microenvironment. Moreover, she also participated in another project aimed to identify diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for various tyles and stages of breast cancer. She is currently a graduate student in the Ph.D. program under MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and is working on identifying collateral lethal targets in PTEN-null cancers.
Jincheng Han received his B.E. degree in Bioengineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2018. During his undergraduate and rotation studies, he actively participated in a variety of labs having different focuses, including immunology, computational biology and single cell sequencing technology. In our laboratory, Han plans to investigate mechanisms by which pancreatic cancer responds to novel immune checkpoint blockade antibodies. He expects to discover novel mechanisms that will lead to new combination therapies for patients.
Wen-Hao (Howard) Hsu received his master’s degree in Science in Oral Biology from National Taiwan University. During his graduate studies, he focused on the biological functions of pluripotency genes and growth factors in head and neck cancer progression. He found that connective tissue growth factor activates NANOG, SOX2, and POU5F1, and inhibits metastasis in head and neck cancer. In our laboratory, Howard plans to investigate the role of telomere dysfunction using a colorectal cancer mouse model, especially looking for the genomic and transcriptomic events driving metastasis in colorectal cancer. He expects his work to contribute to clinical prevention and therapy of colorectal cancer metastasis.
Sunada Khadka
Postdoctoral Fellow
SKhadka@mdanderson.org
(Joined Lab in 2020)
Sunada graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Biology and Chemistry from Wesleyan College in 2016. As an undergraduate, she worked with Dr. Holly Boettger-Tong to elucidate the role of extracellular matrix remodeling in uterine leiomyomas. Sunada joined our lab in 2015 as a CPRIT-CURE summer scholar and contributed in understanding and validation of novel therapeutic targets in prostate cancer. As a graduate student in our lab, Sunada is currently focusing on validating coenzyme A metabolism as a targetable vulnerability in PTEN/PANK1 co-deleted tumors.
Kyle graduated magna cum laude with a B.S. in biology from the University of Massachusetts Boston in 2016, where he studied regeneration and limb patterning in Ambystoma mexicanum. He completed research at Harvard Medical School where he utilized confocal microscopy, transgenic zebrafish models, and various molecular assays to understand the signaling pathways that govern liver development and cancer. Kyle is interested in utilizing three-dimensional in vitro organoid culture and complex mouse models to decipher the relationship between the immune system and colon cancer.
Xiaoying Shang
Research Investigator
XShang@mdanderson.org
(Joined the lab in 2015)
Xiaoying obtained her Ph.D. in 2003 in Tumor Immunology from Peking University, Beijing, China, where she identified the CD8+ T cell response to HLA-A2 restricted peptides MAGE p271-279 and NY-ESO-1 p157-165 from hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients. She began her scientific career at Baylor College of Medicine as a postdoctoral fellow and then an instructor focusing on a pediatric cancer, neuroblastoma. She identified that the cell cycle-related gene, Aurora A, is a negative prognostic factor and a new therapeutic target in human neuroblastoma. She also developed a deeper understanding of how Neuroblastoma Derived Secreted Protein (NDSP) influences neuroblastoma tumor cell growth. In addition, Xiaoying identified the possible roles and mechanism of Dual-specificity phosphatase 26 (DUSP26) in neuroblastoma and found that inhibition of this phosphatase may increase neuroblastoma chemosensitivity, and possibly be a therapeutic target for this aggressive pediatric malignancy. In the DePinho lab, Xiaoying continues to make contributions to support multiple cancer projects, with a goal of identifying novel drug targets and therapeutic strategies for cancer patients.
Yan Xia, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor
yxia@mdanderson.org
(Joined the lab in 2019)
Yan Xia graduated from Nanjing University, China and obtained her Ph.D. degree from Umea University, Sweden. Dr. Xia did her postdoctoral training in Dr. Tony Hunter’s lab in The Salk Institute, where she was awarded the California Breast Cancer Research Program postdoctoral fellowship to support her research on BRCA1 tumor suppressor as an E3 ubiquitin ligase. Since joining MD Anderson, Dr. Xia has focused on cancer metabolism research to pursue the functional mechanisms of PKM2, PGK1, KHK-A in Warburg effect and tumorigenesis and the novel roles of these metabolic enzymes as protein kinases, which have been published on multiple top journals. In our laboratory, Dr. Xia is mainly responsible for guiding graduate students, applying for grants and coordinating projects on understanding the mechanisms and treatments of oncogenic Kras PDAC, CRC, and prostate cancer.
Yonghong Liu, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
yliu38@mdanderson.org
(Joined the lab in 2021)
Yonghong earned his Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology from Hunan University, and his Master’s degree in Biomedical Sciences from Xiamen University, where he discovered that hepatitis B virus X (HBx) and amplified in breast cancer 1 (AIB1) cooperatively promote human hepatocellular carcinoma cell invasiveness. Yonghong earned his Ph.D. degree in Medical Sciences from Texas A&M University in 2019. During his Ph.D. studies, he characterized the tumor suppressive role of nuclear receptor coactivator 6 (NCOA6) in prostate cancer and identified EGFR as a therapeutic target for treating NCOA6-deficient prostate cancer. He was awarded the DoD Prostate Cancer Research Program Early Investigator Research Award, and under the support he continued his research on NCOA6 as a postdoctoral fellow in the same lab. In our laboratory, Yonghong is studying KRAS bypass mechanisms in the context of CDKN2A deletion by generating and characterizing a series of PDAC mouse models. He expects to illuminate novel KRAS bypass mechanisms that will be translated into therapeutics.
Yutao Qi, Ph.D.
Graduate Student
yqi3@mdanderson.org
(Joined the lab in 2021)
Yutao Qi received Master’s degree from Tsinghua University in China, where he gained his first intense training in Biochemistry and Structural Biology. After graduation, he was further trained in Systems/Synthetic Biology (CalTech) and Cancer & Cell Biology (UT GSBS). In our laboratory, Yutao is using multidisciplinary approaches including new mouse models to study tissue homeostasis, tumorigenesis and cancer metastasis. He expects his findings to contribute to cancer diagnosis, prevention and treatment.