Research / Clinical Summary

Jing Yang, PhD Assistant Professor, Pharmacology Cancer Biology Program Contact by Email

Tumor metastasis is a complex, multi-step process by which cancer cells spread from a primary site to distant organs and establish secondary tumors. Although tumor metastasis causes over 90% of cancer deaths, little is known about its molecular basis. Dr. Yang's laboratory is using functional genomics, cellular and molecular biology approaches in cell culture, and mouse tumor models to uncover the genes and the signaling pathways responsible for tumor metastasis.

They have studied a unique mouse breast cancer metastasis model to identify key regulators of tumor metastasis. Their studies discovered that the Twist transcription factor, a master regulator of early embryonic morphogenesis, is essential for the ability of breast tumor cells to metastasize from the mammary gland to the lung. Dr. Yang and her laboratory colleagues further demonstrated that Twist contributes to tumor invasion and metastasis by activating a latent developmental program termed an epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Ectopic expression of Twist resulted in loss of E-cadherin-mediated cell-cell adhesion, activation of mesenchymal markers, and induction of cell motility.

Recently, their and several other studies reported the involvement of Twist and the EMT program in various human malignancies, including breast cancers, gastric cancers, melanomas and neuroblastomas. Currently, their research focuses on the following areas:

1) Dissect the signaling and effector pathways that link Twist to EMT and tumor metastasis.

2) Determine how Twist and EMT contribute to tumor invasion and metastasis in mouse tumor models.

3) Identify and characterize additional novel genes and signaling pathways involved in tumor metastasis.

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