A very long collaboration that started as a side gig in my postdoc with Chi V Dang (at UPenn), and continued over a decade through my stint at Yale with Andre Levchenko, and then for years at UConn is finally out! It all started with the observation of a strange phenomenon while I was characterizing a vector Chi V Dang's lab had created. We found that a small number of cancer cells were not maintaining their HIF transcriptional activity at stable levels, and were cheating the other cells in hypoxia. There is much more to this story, so read along: (here is the link). The observation was made a while back, but it took a long time to fully work...

Collaborating with Junaid Afzal at UCSF, we created a platform that closely mimics the extracellular matrix in the heart, matching its mechanical and chemical properties to rapidly mature human cardiac constructs. https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(22)00955-X Congratulations to Yamin Liu, Wenqiang Du, Yasir Suhail, Visar Ajeti as well as our collaborators in Lixia Yue's lab (Pengyu Zong, Jianlin Feng), as well as Alix Deymier and Maya Yankova for their help. Cardiovascular safety is the number one cause for failure of preclinical drug development, and there is a long standing need to create human cardiac tissue models to test drugs for cardiotoxicity. Currently, the small animal heart models display vastly different biochemical, physiological, and genetic features from humans—making it difficult to replicate the human heart...

Collaborating with Junaid Afzal at UCSF, we created a platform that closely mimics the extracellular matrix in the heart, matching its mechanical and chemical properties to rapidly mature human cardiac constructs. Here is the link. Congratulations to Yamin Liu, Wenqiang Du, Yasir Suhail, Visar Ajeti as well as our collaborators in Lixia Yue's lab (Pengyu Zong, Jianlin Feng), as well as Alix Deymier and Maya Yankova for their help. Cardiovascular safety is the number one cause for failure of preclinical drug development, and there is a long standing need to create human cardiac tissue models to test drugs for cardiotoxicity. Currently, the small animal heart models display vastly different biochemical, physiological, and genetic features from humans—making it difficult to replicate...

Yasir Suhail's work identifying gene regulatory basis for changes in stromal invasability across mammals features in many science and health outlets. A small selection. Science Daily: Gene regulation in mammals offers clues connecting pregnancy and cancer metastasis Phys.org: Studying the evolution of mammals to uncover gene regulation connecting pregnancy and cancer metastasis Genetic Engineering and Biotech: Animal Study Provides Insights into Cancer Metastasis

Shawna Williams covered our joint work with Wagner lab on the connection between pregnancy and cancer in The Scientist.

Our paper connecting the evolutionary connections of pregnancy and cancer metastasis. Just out in Nature Evolution. Here, we show that stromal resistance to invasion (by placenta in the uterus, and cancer in other tissues) has evolved in mammals.

A broad review on the modeling the metastatic disease with a systems approach. Just out in Cell Systems.