Dr. Wu, Cheng-Wen 吳成文 博士

RESEARCH

Lung cancer is the leading cause of death from neoplasia in the world as well as Taiwan. Lung cancer tends to metastasize very early in its course and is one of the most difficult cancers to treat. To better develop early diagnostic makers and therapeutic targets for lung cancer, we are interested in investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying lung cancer initiation, progression, and metastasis. The major research directions in our laboratory are described as follows:

1. Deregulated EGFR signaling: Deregulated expression of EGFR together with ligand binding and concomitant receptor activation has been indicated as the key driver of lung tumorigenesis. We have discovered that deregulated EGFR signaling activates several novel transcriptional factors and microRNAs, which contribute to abnormal cell proliferation and invasions of lung cancer.
2. Cancer stem/initiating cells: By screening molecules involved in metastasis of lung cancer cell lines, we found that several stemness factors, which maintain self-renewal and pluripotency of embryonic stem cells, are highly expressed in lung cancer. We are studying how lung cancer hijacks the embryonic stem cell program to develop metastasis and drug resistance.

We are currently addressing the diagnostic and therapeutic applications of the abovementioned studies to overcome drug resistance and metastasis, both of which will have great impact on lung cancer treatment.

研究介紹

肺癌已成為臺灣及全球癌症死亡的首要原因，本實驗室致力於肺癌轉譯醫學的研究，我們研究的方向簡述如下：
我們發現突變的上皮生長因子受體(EGFR)在肺癌中能調控特定轉錄因子及小分子RNA(microRNA)，以導致肺癌細胞癌化。我們也發現控制胚胎幹細胞自我更新的分子在肺癌中異常表現，我們正在研究肺癌細胞如何透過對這些幹細胞分子的再啟動來達成肺癌轉移與抗藥的過程。透過對肺癌癌化分子機制的瞭解，我們也正嘗試開發新的肺癌早期診的標幟與標靶治療藥物。