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Many congratulations to Dr. Xia Wang for publishing a Cell featured article in June, 2011! Dr. Wang received her Ph.D. degree in Cell Biology from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2009. Currently, Dr. Wang is a research fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Frank McKeon in the Department of Cell Biology at |
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Harvard Medical School. Dr. Wang's research is focused on understanding the cellular origin of the early precursors of lethal human cancers with the hope to develop novel detection methods and therapeutic options at the premalignant stage of these cells.
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The title of her Cell paper is "Residual Embryonic Cells as Precursors of a Barrett's-like Metaplasia" (Cell, 2011 June 24; 145 (7): 1023-1035). Here is the short description of her work:
During the past a few years, Prof. McKeon's group, in collaboration with Dr. Wa Xian's research team at the Institute of Medical Biology, ASTAR, Singapore, has been using mouse models and bioinformatics tools to investigate the unprecedented mechanism for the rise of what might be a subset of highly aggressive cancers linked to chronic inflammatory conditions. In particular, they are interested in "Barrett's esophagus", the threat of which confers a huge risk for developing esophageal adenocarcinoma, a highly aggressive cancer that generally eludes present-day medical treatments. In Dr. Wang's new article, she describes how she used the p63-deficeint mice to model acid-reflux disease and study the origin of Barrett's esophagus, an intestine-like growth in the esophagus that is triggered by chronic acid reflux and often progresses to esophageal cancer. She demonstrates that p63 null embryos rapidly develop intestine-like metaplasia with gene expression profiles similar to Barrett's metaplasia. She then tracks its source to a unique embryonic epithelium that is normally undermined and replaced by p63-expressing cells. Significantly, a discrete population of these embryonic cells persists in adult mice and humans at the squamocolumnar junction, the source of Barrett's metaplasia. Upon programmed damage to the squamous epithelium, these embryonic cells migrate toward adjacent, specialized squamous cells in a process that may recapitulate early Barrett's. Her findings suggest that certain precancerous lesions, such as Barrett's, initiate not from genetic alterations but from competitive between cell lineages driven by opportunity. As such this work suggests new preemptive therapeutic strategies directed at these residual embryonic cells for preventing Barrett's and perhaps a subset of other intractable cancers.
If anyone is interested in her research, you can email her directly at Xia_Wang@hms.harvard.edu
Cheers
HMS-CSSA
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