Haotian Zhao
New York Institute of Technology, NY·Biology
Choroid plexus tumors are rare brain cancers found mostly in young children, making up as much as 20% of brain tumors in the first year of life. The choroid plexus is the tissue that lines the brain's fluid-filled cavities and produces cerebrospinal fluid.
- Fields
Biology
Genetics
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
choroid plexus carcinoma
choroid plexus papilloma
pediatric brain tumor
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2028
What they work on
- Test whether microRNAs, short RNAs that reduce target gene activity, influence the formation of cells bearing many hair-like projections in the choroid plexus, using both animal and cell-culture experiments.
- Characterize microRNA expression as human choroid plexus cells build multiple cilia, using a human choroid plexus organoid, a lab-grown miniature version of the tissue.
- Identify genes whose activity shifts during choroid plexus development and pinpoint likely microRNA targets among them, using transcriptomics to profile all active genes.
- Determine how microRNAs affect the cilia program and tumor growth in choroid plexus carcinoma lacking the tumor-suppressor gene TP53, by adding or removing individual microRNAs.
More about the research
The benign form, papilloma, can usually be removed surgically, but choroid plexus carcinoma is aggressive, often recurs or spreads, and fewer than half of children survive five years after diagnosis. Because patients are often too young for radiation, and survivors face lasting side effects such as intellectual disability, better therapies depend on understanding the underlying biology of how this tissue normally matures.
Why it matters
Children with choroid plexus carcinoma respond poorly to current surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, and survivors often carry long-term treatment effects. Clarifying how small non-coding RNAs control the maturation program that appears to restrain these tumors could point toward therapies that push tumor cells back toward a differentiated state, and the human organoid model may offer a new way to study choroid plexus function.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jason Hanna
Purdue University, IN·Biology
Evaluate the functional effects of new tumor-suppressing miRNA candidates, identified by a CRISPR-Cas9 miRNA-focused guide RNA screen, in normal endothelial cells and angiosarcoma.
Cornelia Peterson
Tufts University, MA·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Test how turning the insulin/insulin-like growth factor signaling (IIS) pathway up or down with drugs and genetic tools changes MYC levels, behavior and gene activity in cultured normal and tumor meibocytes, the oil-producing eyelid gland cells.
Matija Snuderl
New York University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Compare epigenetic machinery and gene expression in mature versus primitive regions of human medulloblastoma tissue, using high-resolution genomic and epigenetic profiling.
The school
New York Institute of Technology: 4 labs on PI Pages, $7M a year on research, 34 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.