Programs
IBMS Discipline
Mentor
Xiaoyu (Jenny) Yang, M.S.
Ph.D. Student
Biography
Jenny is performing her dissertation work under the mentorship of Dr. Pratap Kumar. The goal of her research is to develop a therapeutic regimen with improved efficacy and reduces toxicity for pancreatic cancer patients. Her work has revealed the important crosstalk between pancreatic stellate cells – the most abundant and proliferative cell type in the tumor stroma, and pancreatic cancer cells to promote tumor growth and identified a natural compound that inhibits this tumor-stromal interaction.
Research Topic:
Novel role of glutamine in the tumor-stromal interaction of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma
Publications
Mancha-Ramirez A, Yang X, Liang H, Junco JJ, Lee KP, Fulton SR, Lee KP, Espinoza M, Wool JH, Slaga A, Glade D, Hanes M, Malik G, Kim DJ, DiGiovanni J, Slaga TJ. Harnessing the gatekeepers of glucocorticoids for chemoprevention of non-melanoma skin cancer. Molecular Carcinogenesis (2018). doi: 10.1002/mc.22912.
Thapa D, Huang SB, Muñoz AR, Yang X, Bedolla RG, Reddick RL, Miyamoto H, Kumar AP and Ghosh R. Attenuation of NADPH:Quinone Oxidoreductase 1 aggravates prostate cancer and tumor cell plasticity by TGFβ signaling. Commun Biol 3, 12 (2020).
Chang HH, Xu Y, Lai H, Yang X, Tseng CC, Lai YJ, Pan Y, Zhou E, Johnson MD, Wang JK, and Lin CY. Differential subcellular localization renders HAI-2 a matriptase inhibitor in breast cancer cells but not in mammary epithelial cells. PLoS ONE (2015) ; 10(3): e0120489.
Wang JK, Teng IJ, Lo TJ, Moore S, Yeo YH, Teng YC, Kaul M, Chen CC, Zuo AH, Chou FP, Yang X, Tseng IC, Johnson MD and Lin CY. Matriptase autoactivation is tightly regulated by the cellular chemical environments. PLoS ONE (2014) 9(4): e93899.
Education
M.S., Biotechnology, Georgetown University, Washington D.C, 2013
B.S., Bioscience, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China, 2011
Awards
Department of Defense, Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program Horizon Award