Congratulations to our RPG students for their fantastic presentations and awards at the 25th RPG Symposium! Very well done. Keep up the good work 👍
Best Oral Presentation Awards:
Jane LOONG Ho Chun (PhD student)
Matthew WONG Tsz Lam (PhD student)
Best Poster Presentation Award:
Jia Jian LOH (PhD student)
News
SKLLR Internal Research Meeting 2020
Congrats to Jane on winning one of the three Best Presentation Awards at the State Key Laboratory of Liver Research (SKLLR) Internal Research Meeting held on November 28th 2020 at HKU. A morning well spent, learning about 13 interesting HCC related projects presented by PhDs and PDFs! Well done Jane 👍
Our new paper in Advanced Science
Congrats to Johnson and the team! Our paper “Chemotherapy enriched THBS2-deficient cancer stem cells drive hepatocarcinogenesis through matrix softness induced histone H3 modifications” is accepted for publication in Advanced Science.
Findings of this study show that extracellular matrix remodeling by chemotherapy 5-FU enriched THBS2-deficient CD133 cancer stem cells can provide a route of escape that leads to HCC metastasis. In brief, 5-FU enriches for CD133 expressing cells with deficient THBS2 expression. THBS2, which is a known extracellular matrix (ECM)-modifying protein, has the ability to alter MMP2/MMP9 activity and thus collagen and matrix stiffness, which leads to altered cancer and stemness properties. This local soft microenvironment then induces mechano-epigenetic changes to enhance CD133 expression and suppress THBS2 expression through histone H3 modifications at their respective promoter regions, facilitating a positive feedback loop that supports the clonogenic expansion of a subpopulation of HCC cells with high CD133 expression and low THBS2 expression.
Our new paper in Cancer Letters
Congrats to Noel, Johnson, and the team! Read all about our story on how PRMT6 deficiency promotes autophagy in hostile HCC microenvironments via regulating BAG5/HSC70 to be soon published in Cancer Letters.

Hello and Welcome!
SKLLR Annual Symposium 2019/20
July 18 2020 – This year’s State Key Laboratory of Liver Research (SKLLR) Annual Symposium was postponed again and again due to COVID-19. But despite all obstacles, the event was successfully held online through ZOOM on July 18th 2020. Our Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Tin-Lok Wong gave a presentation on his latest work “CRAF methylation by PRMT6 regulates aerobic glycolysis driven hepatocarcinogenesis via ERK-dependent PKM2 nuclear relocalization and activation” which was just published in the April 2020 issue of Hepatology.