Research Interests

• His lab mainly focuses on molecular mechanisms of cancer and the novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for cancer. This lab found that DKK1 could be used as a diagnosis marker for early hepatocellular carcinoma and hepatocellular carcinoma with alpha fetoprotein (AFP) negative (The Lancet Oncology 2012). The lab also demonstrated for the first time that RCAN1 isoform 4 (RCAN1.4) acts as a novel suppressor of HCC through regulation of the calcineurin-nuclear factor of activated T cells pathway (Gastroenterology 2017). His lab and collaborators showed that pharmacological inhibition of the DNA-replication kinase CDC7 induced senescence selectively in liver cancer cells with mutations in TP53. The results experimentally validated the one–two punch therapy for treatment of liver cancer with mutations in TP53 (Nature 2019). His lab and collaborators also found that inhibition of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) was synthetic lethal with lenvatinib in liver cancer (Nature 2021).