Emerging Leaders in Oncogene
The Emerging Leaders collection welcomes and recognizes new talent in the oncology field. This collection acknowledges groundbreaking researchers, clinicians, and educators who are still in the early stages of their scientific careers. It serves as a platform to showcase Emerging Leaders and their exciting work in the oncogenetics field.
Ping Mu, PhD, an Assistant Professor and the Deborah and W.A. “Tex” Moncrief, Jr. Endowed Scholar at UT Southwestern Medical Center, leads a laboratory dedicated to uncovering the mechanisms behind resistance to anticancer therapies. He and his team’s work has identified novel molecular mechanisms that confer antiandrogen resistance in prostate cancer through lineage plasticity, epigenetic reprogramming, and APOBEC-driven mutagenesis. These discoveries have been published in prominent journals, including Science (2017), Cancer Cell (2020, 2023), and Nature Cancer (2022). Looking ahead, Mu’s team is committed to deepening the understanding of therapy resistance acquisition in tumor cells, potentially paving the way for breakthrough therapeutic strategies that could enhance patient clinical outcomes. His distinguished research has earned him prestigious accolades such as the NIH K99 award, PCF Young Investigator Award, AACR NextGen Stars Award, SBUR Young Investigator Award, CPRIT Award, SAU Rising Star Award, and multiple NIH and DoD awards.
Antonella Sistigu is Group Leader of the Tumor Immunology and Immunotherapy Unit at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Campus di Roma, Rome, Italy. My research is focused on Type-I interferon (IFN-I) functions in cancer at the frontier between host protection and tumor promotion. I started by investigating whether IFNs-I could be part of the mechanics of immunogenic cell death, the “basic inflammatory unit” – the dialogue between cancer dying cells and immune cells, and I showed that immunogenic chemotherapy mimics viral infection leading to a cancer-cell autonomous IFN-I fingerprint indispensable to elicit protective anticancer immunity [Sistigu A et al, Nat Med 2014]. However, the idea that IFN-I-induced cancer immunosurveillance could push cancer evolution and lead therapy resistance started to fascinate me more and more. I started a study bridging IFNs-I and cancer stem cells (CSCs). I described a hitherto unknown IFN-I-triggered epigenetic mechanism of cancer cell evolution able to induce CSCs with increased adaptiveness to natural and therapy-induced immunosurveillance [Musella M et al, Nat Immunol 2022].
Anastasia C. Hepburn PhD is currently a recipient of a Prostate Cancer Foundation Young Investigator Award (class 2020). She completed her PhD on the role of androgen receptor-interacting scaffolding proteins in prostate cancer under the supervision of Prof Craig N. Robson at Newcastle University, UK. She undertook her Postdoctoral training in Prof Rakesh Heer’s Lab at Newcastle University Centre for Cancer developing stem cell models to study prostate cancer. Her work has contributed to the first generation of human prostatederived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) opening up new and exciting opportunities for translational research within the field. She recently led on the generation of prostate organoids from iPSCs, which preceded a top-cited paper of 2020 in Stem Cells Translational Medicine and is developing prostate cancer organoid models through genome engineering of iPSCs to create in vitro patient genotypic ‘avatars’ for precision medicine.
Huarong Chen is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). His primary research interests include basic and translational research of gastrointestinal cancer. He revealed abnormal genetic and epigenetic changes that contribute to the development of gastrointestinal cancer and elucidated their molecular mechanisms and potential clinical implications. Dr. Chen completed his Ph.D. study in Oncology with Prof. Shu Zheng at Zhejiang University and conducted his postdoctoral work at the Department of Medicine & Therapeutics of CUHK with Prof. Jun Yu. As of 2023, Dr. Chen has published 53 articles in peerreviewed journals with a total and average IF of 693 and 13.1, respectively. He has obtained 6 external competitive grants as PI with a total amount of over 6 million HK dollars for the past 3 years.
