Cancer Innate Immunity

Cancer progression is largely dependent on the tumor microenvironments. Innate immunity is our first line defense against pathogen, its importance in cancer clearance has been recognized with unclear working mechanisms since the last decade. Our group recently identified that Smads activation is crucial for immunosuppression in tumor, especially on the NK cells. We have started to develop novel therapeutics to reawake our innate immunity against cancer via cell-based or cell-free strategy. Further understanding of the molecular mechanisms thereby silencing our immune system in tumor microenvironment will lead to discovery of novel and effective therapeutic targets against cancer.

In Tumour microenvironment, single-cell RNA sequencing allows us to better resolution with the potential discovery of novel pathogenic mechanism and therapeutic target for cancers. Recently, by dissecting the Non-small cell carcinoma (NSCLC) of lung with scRNA-seq, we unexpectedly identified a novel mechanism for de novo generating myofibroblasts in NSCLC via a tissue fibrosis pathway “Macrophage-Myofibroblast Transition” Our discovery provides a new insight of fibrotic pathways into tumour microenvironment .Thus, we further developed a virus-free gene therapy USMB-shMincle [Molecular Therapy Oncolytic, 2021] and a traditional Chinese medicine-based therapy AANG for solid cancers by targeting their fibrotic pathways. Our innovations have been awarded Gold Medal with Congratulations of the Jury Medal in Inventions Geneva 2021 (Switzerland), Innovation First-class Award of the 7th Hong Kong University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition (Hong Kong), and the 7th Youth Dream Makers Award 2021 (Hong Kong), encouraging us to continue our basic and translational research against cancer.