July 2020 – A very belated welcome to Coco and Pucci to our team. Coco joined us as a Research Assistant in late February 2020; while Pucci joined us as a BBMS Summer Intern in early July 2020. Pucci will continue on with her final year project in the lab in September. Welcome 🙂
April 2020 – Our work on “CRAF methylation by PRMT6 regulates aerobic glycolysis driven hepatocarcinogenesis via ERK-dependent PKM2 nuclear relocalization and activation” was commented by Drs. Amaia Navarro-Corcuera and Robert E Schwartz and featured in Hepatology Highlights.
Feb 21 2020 – Life goes on amid the COVID-19 epidemic. The team gathered for a very belated birthday celebration for Lena. We also welcome the newest members of our team Yunong, Sarah and Terry. Happy Birthday and Welcome!
Dec 18 2019 @ Hong Kong – Annual Christmas Gathering. Thankful 🙂
Dec 9 to 12 2019 @ Awaji, Japan – Shared, learned, met new and caught up with old friends at the Cold Spring Harbor Asia 2019 Conference on Liver, Biology, Diseases and Cancer held in Awaji, Japan this year.
Jane sharing her latest research findings at the poster session.
Nov 4-6 2019 @ Bad Nauheim, Germany – Stephanie gave a talk at the HKU-CUHK-GIBH-MPI Joint Symposium – New Frontiers in Stem Cell Biology at Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research.
Oct 28-31 2019 @ Shanghai, China – Blessed to have the opportunity to participate in the World Laureates Association 2nd Annual Forum this year. Such an eye opening experience to be in the same room with 44 Nobel Laureates at the same time.
Read all about Steve’s REX1 story in the upcoming issue of Hepatology. In brief, the work describes a critical repressive function of REX1 in maintenance of HCC cells by regulating MKK6 binding and p38 MAPK signaling. REX1 deficiency induced enhancement of p38 MAPK signaling, leading to F-actin reorganization and activation of NRF2-mediated oxidative stress response, which collectively contributed to enhanced stemness and metastatic capabilites of HCC cells.
Luk ST, Ng KY, Zhou L, Tong M, Wong TL, Yu HJ, Lo CM, Man K, Guan XY, Lee TK, Ma S. Deficiency in embryonic stem cell marker REX1 activates MKK6-dependent p38 MAPK signaling to drive hepatocarcinogenesis. Hepatology 2019; accepted
The team gathered for a nice all you can eat Japanese buffet to welcome our new PDF Chris and to bid farewell to our visiting student Huajian. Thank you Huajian for your hard work and contribution to the lab in the past year. We look forward to welcoming you back soon 🙂
Read about our research work on cancer stem cells – the roots of cancer. Thank you for the feature. Proud to be part of HKU 🙂 and one of the many women in science 🙂 🙂
SMA Lab 