Yaguang Xi
University of Georgia, GA·Pharmacology
Some cancers resist today's best treatments. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) lacks the receptors that common targeted drugs act on, so it has few effective therapies.
- Fields
Pharmacology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
triple-negative breast cancer
miR-10b
microRNA
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Determine how the oncogenic microRNA miR-10b and its target gene NR4A3 contribute to the experimental compound LG007's activity against triple-negative breast cancer.
- Test LG007's ability to block TNBC growth, recurrence and metastasis in mouse models, including patient-derived xenografts, that mimic the clinical setting.
- Characterize LG007's pharmacology and toxicity in preparation for future clinical testing.
- Determine how low-dose sulindac, an anti-inflammatory drug, reduces PD-L1 production and exosomal PD-L1 release in colorectal cancer, making tumors more responsive to anti-PD-L1 therapy.
- Test whether sulindac plus anti-PD-L1 antibodies shrinks MSS and MSI colorectal tumors and blocks metastasis, using humanized patient-derived xenograft mice.
More about the research
Most colorectal cancers do not respond to immune checkpoint inhibitors, drugs that release the brakes on immune cells. Both projects described here test drug-based ways to treat these hard-to-treat cancers, using patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models: mice carrying tumors grown from patients' own tissue.
Why it matters
Patients with advanced triple-negative breast cancer have few FDA-approved drug options, and LG007 could become a new drug candidate if safety studies support it. For the roughly 85% of colorectal cancer patients who gain little from checkpoint immunotherapy, combining low-dose sulindac with anti-PD-L1 could improve responses. Because both drugs are already approved, this could move quickly into Phase II trials.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ramesh Ganju
Ohio State University, OH·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how S100A7 signaling controls genes that respond to interferon-gamma, especially PD-L1 and Fas, in African American TNBC cells and in engineered mice that overproduce mouse S100a7.
Sanchita Bhatnagar
University of California-Davis, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Screen TRIM37 gene variants already identified in African American women for anoikis resistance, the ability of cancer cells to survive after detaching, and compare how risk and reference alleles of TRIM37 behave biologically.
Shiaw-Yih Lin
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether scarce DNA building blocks (dNTPs) cause RNA to be misinserted into TNBC genomes, and whether blocking RNase H2 leaves these errors in place, causing lethal replication stress. Also identify how tumors resist the inhibitor.
The school
University of Georgia: 27 labs on PI Pages, $628M a year on research, 598 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.