Dr. Ren-In You
General information
Position
Research interests
Research title
- Drug resistance and immunomodulation in cancers.
- Host immune response and regulation in persistent viral infection.
Research interests
The long-term objectives of our laboratory are to study the epigenetic mechanisms controlling various anticancer drugs resistance in vitro as well as in a clinical setting. Epigenetic gene regulation has a crucial role in cell fate determination. In drug-resistant tumor cells, elucidating the key epigenetic markers and their biological consequences aids the design of therapies aimed at preventing or reversing drug resistance. It is important to know the routes by which tumor cells bypass the drug-mediated inhibition of the target genes, and gain alternative pathways to tumorogenesis or tumor phenotype. Identification of these pathways can help explore a treatment option with the aim of reactivating the suppressor genes and allowing the targeted drugs to have again their original effect.
Various experimental methods are utilized to validate epigenetic regulation of gene expression, such as methylation-specific PCR, in vitro methylation assay, EMSA, ChIP, DNMT and HDAC activity assays. Further approaches to confirm results include DNA methylation array, and gene knock-in/knock-down studies. In total, our approach employs the following experimental methods: establishing cell survival, proliferation, colony formation assays, and tumor xenograft model in animals.
We are also interested in gene regulation of host immune response underlying persistent viral infection. Persistent hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection has been attributed to the impaired host T-cell immune responses. This persistent infection can cause chronic liver inflammation, liver cirrhosis or even hepatocellular carcinoma. Exploring the details of gene regulation in immunomodulation during HCV infection will allow us to find targets to break virus persistence and to stop hepatoma progression.
We have regular group meetings with collaborators Dr. Lo SY and Dr. Wu WS. Students involved in this study will learn both technical and theoretical aspects of cell culturing, signal transduction, and molecular biology, as well as data collection, analysis, and interpretation.
Publications
Dai MS, Vassaux G, Xu M, You RI, Hsieh YF, Ouisse LH, Lo KY, Sytwu HK, Chao TY. 2012. Early Treg suppression by a listeriolysin-O-expressing E. coli vaccine in heterologous prime-boost vaccination against cancer. Vaccine 30(48): 6903-11.
You RI, Chang YC, Chen PM, Wang WS, Hsu TL, Yang CY, Lee CT, Hsieh SL. 2008. Apoptosis of Dendritic Cells Induced by Decoy Receptor 3. Blood 1:1480-88
You RI, Chen MC, Wang HW, Chou YC, Lin CH, Hsieh SL. 2006. Inhibition of lymphotoxin-beta receptor-mediated cell death by survivin-DeltaEx3. Cancer Res. 15:3051-61