Humboldt Research Award Granted to Cancer Researcher Hua Eleanor Yu – Host Institute: MDC

The award is connected with an invitation to spend a period of up to one year cooperating on a long-term research project with a research institution in Germany. Professor Yu selected the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch as her host institution. With Professor Yu, a total of 36 scientists have received the prestigious award in 2014. It is valued at 60,000 EUR.

Professor Yu has been working for years with the immunologist Professor Thomas Blankenstein (MDC and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin). The two researchers have already co-authored publications, and Professor Blankenstein was a visiting professor in Professor Yu’s laboratory in Duarte.

In Berlin Professor Yu will work together with Professor Blankenstein and colleagues to test new treatment methods based on her basic research using a model for virus-induced liver cancer developed by scientists at the MDC and which is very similar to the clinical situation.

Professor Yu’s research activities focus on a group of proteins that are crucial for the life cycles of cancer cells. Cancer cells employ a variety of survival strategies: they proliferate unchecked, elude the immune system and evade apoptosis, the body’s protective program that induces programmed cell death in defective cells.

Furthermore, they can form secondary tumors (metastases). In addition, cancer cells have a cell survival strategy against starvation. They release molecules to promote angiogenesis, the growth of a blood vessel network to provide the tumor with its own blood supply.

The regulation of all of these processes is contributed by a group of proteins called STAT (signal transducer and activator of transcription), particularly STAT3. Professor Yu is a pioneer in the STAT3 field. She was the first to discover that activated STAT3 promotes cancer growth not only by increasing tumor cell survival but also by modulating the immune system, and she showed how the protein achieves this.

STAT3 also drives the crosstalk between the cancer cells and the healthy cells in and around the tumor, thus influencing its immediate surroundings to favor tumor progression. Because of its key importance in diverse human tumors, STAT3 is regarded as a promising target for cancer therapy.

Contact:
Barbara Bachtler
Press Department
Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch
in the Helmholtz Association
Robert-Rössle-Straße 10
13125 Berlin
Germany
Phone: +49 (0) 30 94 06 – 38 96
Fax: +49 (0) 30 94 06 – 38 33
e-mail: presse@mdc-berlin.de
http://www.mdc-berlin.de/

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