En-Chi Hsu, Ph.D.
Assistant Investigator
Institute of Molecular and Genomic Medicine
E-mail: enchi@nhri.edu.tw
EDUCATION
PhD, Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy, The Ohio State University, USA (2014)
MS, Microbiology and Immunology, National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan (2004)
BS, Life Science, National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan (2002)
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCES
2022-present Assistant Investigator, Institute of Molecular and Genomic Medicine, NHRI, Taiwan
2020-2022 Research Scientist. Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection, Department of Radiology, Stanford University, USA.
2016-2020 Postdoctoral Fellow. Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection, Department of Radiology, Stanford University, USA.
2014-2015 Postdoctoral Fellow. Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy, College of Pharmacy, The Ohio State University, USA.
2006-2009 Research Assistant. Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Welcome to our laboratory! Dr. Hsu has wide interests in different levels of tumorigenesis. Utilizing manipulation of gene expression, membrane protein-protein interactome profiling, cancer genomic-proteomic analysis approaches, patient-derived xenografts (PDX), patient-derived tissue slice culture and manipulation, and metastasis mouse models, we have powerful tools to investigate clinically relevant fundamental molecular mechanisms underlying cancer development. Welcome any interdisciplinary collaboration or person with different expertise to join my lab. Feel free to contact me. Our lab creates new technologies and applications for cancer therapeutics and diagnostics. Our vision is to translate our discoveries into the clinic and our mission is to benefit patients with our research as much as possible.
1) Early Detection of Cancer
Cancer early detection is the best answer to end cancers at the beginning before they are getting worse, and this strategy dramatically prolongs the survival rate of patients. We will team up with clinicians and develop liquid biopsy-based exosomal cancer biomarker panels for early detection utilizing exosome miRNA transcriptomic correlative signature for liver cancer and pancreatic cancer.
2) Drug Resistance and Lineage Plasticity
How do cancer cells gain the drug resistant ability? We are interested in therapy-acquired lineage plasticity, and neuroendocrine differentiation across multiple cancer types including neuroendocrine prostate cancer (NEPC) and small cell lung cancer (SCLC). Can we identify novel targets to inhibit therapy-acquired lineage plasticity? Can we monitor and predict the shift for patients with treatment? We will address these important questions using transcriptomic & proteomic approaches and determine the functional roles of master regulators targeting lineage plasticity.
3) Metastatic Organotropism
Metastasis is the major cause of cancer related deaths. It is noteworthy that liver metastasis of multiple cancer types including prostate, colon, breast, and lung cancer in patients is consistently associated with the poorest survival relative to locoregional, or other organ colonization. While the field of global genomics studies is rapidly developing, decoding liver metastasis specific genomic alterations is urgently needed. Our goal is to understand the fundamental mechanism of liver metastasis and improve the treatment of this lethal disease. We developed an encouraging metastatic organotropism analysis method, named “MetaCode”, which will be applied on multiple cancer types such as colon, breast, and lung cancer with clinical genomic datasets. We are interested in exploring the consistent or unique molecular mechanism and targetable pathways associated with liver metastasis across multiple epithelial cancer types.
4) Cancer Surface Atlas Project
Protein-protein interaction is an important factor to regulate protein functions and cell signalings. However, poorly understood about membrane protein-protein interaction due to the difficultly to examine when the cells have been lysed. To study cancer surface interactome is aiming the potential application for easy detection and easy targeting of tumors by developing antibodies. Herein, we combined several unique technologies such as BioID, RIME, in situ PLA, bio-layer interferometry, and antibody-based hyperplexed imaging to illustrate the cancer surface and visualize the cancer specific protein complex on the membrane from cancer cell lines to patient samples. Our final goal is to develop cancer-specific humanized antibodies as imaging and targeting theranostic molecular probe for prostate cancer, liver cancer, and pancreatic cancer.
HONORS & AWARDS
2021-2022 SPARK Translational Research Program Pilot Grant. Stanford University, USA
2020-2021 Spectrum MedTech Pilot Grant. Stanford University, USA
2020 The Society for Basic Urologic Research (SBUR) Annual Meeting Travel Award, USA
2020 International Alliance for Cancer Early Detection (ACED) – Invited Talk, UK
2013 The Albert H. Soloway Award in Pharmacy and Cancer Research. The Ohio State University, USA
2012-2014 Pelatonia Graduate Fellowship. The Ohio State University, USA
2012 Pharmacy Research Day Award. The Ohio State University, USA
2004 National Yang-Ming University Academic Thesis Competition Award, Taiwan
2002 International Meeting on Molecular Biology of Hepatitis B Viruses Travel Award, USA
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
- Aslan M*, Hsu EC*, Garcia-Marques F, Bermudez A, Liu S, Shen M, Rice MA, West RB, Pitteri SJ, Győrffy B, Stoyanova T. (2021) A novel oncogene-mediated metabolic gene signature predicts breast cancer outcome. npj Breast Cancer. 7(1):141. *These authors contributed equally. PMID: 34711841
- Aslan M*, Hsu EC*, Liu S, Stoyanova T. (2021) Quantifying the invasion and migration ability of cancer cells with a 3D Matrigel drop invasion assay. Biol Methods Protoc. 6(1):bpab014. *These authors contributed equally. PMID: 34377838
- Hsu EC, Shen M, Aslan M, Liu S, Garcia-Marques F, Pitteri SJ, Nelson PS, Nguyen HM, Corey E, Brooks JD, and Stoyanova T. (2021) MCM2-7 complex is a novel druggable target for neuroendocrine prostate cancer. Scientific Report. 11(1):13305. PMID: 34172788
- Chen YS, Zhao Y, Beinat C, Zlitni A, Hsu EC, Chen DH, Achterberg F, Wang H, Stoyanova T, Dionne J, Gambhir SS. (2021) Ultra-High-Frequency-Radio-Frequency-Acoustic Molecular Imaging with Saline Nanodroplets in Living Subjects. Nature Nanotechnology. 16(6):717-724. PMID: 33782588
- Ghoochani A, Hsu EC, Aslan M, Rice MA, Nguyen HM, Brooks JD, Corey E, Paulmurugan R and Stoyanova T. (2021) Ferroptosis induction is a novel therapeutic approach for advanced prostate cancer. Cancer Research. 81(6):1583-1594. PMID: 33483372
- Liu S, Shen M, Hsu EC, Zhang CA, Garcia-Marques F, Nolley R, Koul K, Rice MA, Aslan M, Pitteri SJ, Massie C, George A, Brooks JD, Gnanapragasam VJ, Stoyanova T. (2020) Discovery of PTN as a serum-based biomarker of pro-metastatic prostate cancer. Br J Cancer. 124(5):896-900. PMID: 33288843
- Hsu EC, Rice MA, Bermudez A, Marques FJG, Aslan M, Liu S, Ghoochani A, Zhang CA, Chen YS, Zlitni A, Kumar S, Nolley R, Habte F, Shen M, Koul K, Peehl DM, Zoubeidi A, Gambhir SS, Kunder CA, Pitteri SJ, Brooks JD, Stoyanova T. (2020) Trop2 is a driver of metastatic prostate cancer with neuroendocrine phenotype via PARP1. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 117(4):2032-2042. PMID: 31932422
- Rice MA, Hsu EC, Aslan M, Ghoochani A, Su A, Stoyanova T. (2019) Loss of Notch1 activity inhibits prostate cancer growth and metastasis and sensitizes prostate cancer cells to anti-androgen therapies. Molecular Cancer Therapeutics 18(7):1230-1242. PMID: 31028097
- Yeh HW, Hsu EC, Lang YD, Gu DL, Shih JH, Chen CF, Chen CT, Tu PH and Jou YS. (2018) PSPC1 mediates TGFβ1 autocrine signaling and Smad2/3 target switching to promote EMT, stemness, and metastasis. Nature Cell Biology 20(4):479-491. PMID: 29593326
- Liu F, Vermesh O, Mani V, Ge TJ, Madsen SJ, Sabour A, Hsu EC, Gowrishankar G, Kanada M, Jokerst JV, Sierra RG, Chang E, Lau K, Sridhar K, Bermudez A, Pitteri SJ, Stoyanova T, Sinclair R, Nair VS, Gambhir SS, Demirci U. (2017) The Exosome Total Isolation Chip. ACS Nano 11(11):10712-10723.PMID: 29090896