The third leading cause of death from cancer in the world is a type of liver cancer that’s on the rise in Texas. Hepatocellular carcinoma is the most common cause of primary liver cancer in adults, and most often affects people who suffer from liver diseases like cirrhosis, hepatitis, and fatty liver disease.
To help fight liver cancer in Texas, a promising liver cancer physician-scientist, Dr. Hao Zhu, was recruited to the Children’s Research Institute at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Dr. Zhu, who also treats liver cancer patients at Parkland Hospital, received a CPRIT First Time Tenure Track Award in 2012. He was recruited from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s Hospital in Boston, where he was a research fellow.
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The third leading cause of death from cancer in the world is a type of liver cancer that’s on the rise in Texas. Hepatocellular carcinoma is the most common cause of primary liver cancer in adults, and most often affects people who suffer from liver diseases like cirrhosis, hepatitis, and fatty liver disease.
To help fight liver cancer in Texas, a promising liver cancer physician-scientist, Dr. Hao Zhu, was recruited to the Children’s Research Institute at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Dr. Zhu, who also treats liver cancer patients at Parkland Hospital, received a CPRIT First Time Tenure Track Award in 2012. He was recruited from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s Hospital in Boston, where he was a research fellow.
The liver can regenerate itself after an injury like surgery. The common wisdom held that this ability makes it more vulnerable to cancer, because cells that proliferate during regeneration might also over-proliferate—which is what happens in cancer.
But Dr. Zhu believes that it’s the chronic damage that liver disease causes, and the inability of the liver to heal or recover from that damage, that creates the environment for liver cancer to take root. Because this cancer is occurring in an already failing organ, treatment options are limited.
“You’ve got cancer, and you’ve got liver failure,” Dr. Zhu says. “It’s challenging to get rid of the cancer without hurting the liver more. The basic question is how do we improve that situation?”
Dr. Zhu has been exploring the genetic pathways that contribute to liver cancer, as well as the pathways that affect the liver’s ability to regenerate itself.
Surprisingly, but promisingly, he has found that these pathways don’t always directly contradict each other. Improving the liver’s ability to regenerate doesn’t necessarily lead to cancer, and trying to prevent liver cancer from forming in a damaged liver doesn’t always prevent it from regenerating.
“We’re using that discovery to stimulate further identification of genes and mechanisms that can improve regeneration but block cancer,” Dr. Zhu says. “Ultimately, that would be a great therapeutic target,” although that’s still a long way off.
Dr. Zhu says the kind of research he is doing wouldn’t be possible without the support of CPRIT. “It’s enabled us to take much, much bigger risks in more different directions,” he says, and “by virtue of that we’ve gotten more exciting and interesting results.”
He says the work in the clinic helps make his research in the laboratory relevant. “It’s very important for me to have a specific understanding of what is going on in the clinic and with my patients in order to understand what would be a meaningful strategy or approach to treat them,” he says.
Zhu completed his undergraduate training in biology at Duke University and received his M.D. from Harvard University Medical School. He completed an internal medicine residency at the University of California, San Francisco, before coming to Dana Farber in 2008.
Since becoming a CPRIT Scholar, he has been awarded additional grant support from CPRIT as well as the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, National Cancer Institute, Department of Defense, and Stand Up To Cancer.
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