Mar 25 13:30 Change of cell identity: Tumorigenesis and lineage conversion
Speaker：Dr. Lijian Hui, Institute of Biochemistry and Cellular Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
Host: Dali Li
When: 2014-3-25 13:30
Where: Conference Room 534, School of Life Sciences
CV: Dr. Lijian Hui obtained his PhD degree from Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology (SIBCB) in 2003. He had his Postdoc training in Dr. Erwin Wagner lab at Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna, Austria. Dr. Hui was the first to characterize the in vivo functions of p38 and JNK MAP kinases in liver tumorigenesis. His study showed that JNK1 is a potential target for liver cancer therapy. After moving back to SIBCB to setup his own lab at the end of 2008, Dr. Hui continues his interest on understanding the mechanistic regulation underlying tumorigenesis of normal cells (Nature Cell Biology 2012; Hepatology 2013). Recently, taken hepatocytes as the experimental system, his lab has initiated studies on cell lineage conversion, specifically focusing on induction of functional hepatocyte-like cells from cells of non-hepatic origin (Cell Stem Cell 2014, Nature 2011).
Abstract:To understand the mechanistic regulation underlying tumorigenesis of normal cells is a long-term interest of his scientific research. Recently, taken hepatocytes as the experimental system, his lab has initiated studies on cell lineage conversion, specifically focusing on induction of functional hepatocyte-like cells from cells of non-hepatic origin. Striving to understand these two seemingly different phenomena, they find themselves in querying the essential scientific question: How is cell identity maintained through preventing the conversion of terminally differentiated cells to other cell types, including transdifferentiation to different lineages and transformation to tumor cells? They wish that with the efforts to address this question they would eventually contribute to the development of novel therapies for liver diseases and cancers.ere is a need for biological parameters to be analyzed in the absence of immune responses.