“Machine learning-assisted elucidation of CD81-CD44 interactions in promoting cancer stemness and extracellular vesicle integrity“, published by eLife on Oct 4th, 2022 (https://elifesciences.org/articles/82669)!
“Machine learning-assisted elucidation of CD81-CD44 interactions in promoting cancer stemness and extracellular vesicle integrity“, published by eLife on Oct 4th, 2022 (https://elifesciences.org/articles/82669)!
Featured post
Featured post
Circulating ACE2-expressing extracellular vesicles block broad strains of SARS-CoV-2.
El-Shennawy L, Hoffmann AD, Dashzeveg NK, McAndrews KM, Mehl PJ, Cornish D, Yu Z, Tokars VL, Nicolaescu V, Tomatsidou A, Mao C, Felicelli CJ, Tsai CF, Ostiguin C, Jia Y, Li L, Furlong K, Wysocki J, Luo X, Ruivo CF, Batlle D, Hope TJ, Shen Y, Chae YK, Zhang H, LeBleu VS, Shi T, Swaminathan S, Luo Y, Missiakas D, Randall GC, Demonbreun AR, Ison MG, Kalluri R, Fang D, Liu H.Nat Commun. 2022 Jan 20;13(1):405. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-27893-2.PMID: 35058437 Free PMC article.
Full Text:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27893-2
News coverage 1: https://www.fiercebiotech.com/research/decoy-vesicles-protect-against-covid-19-from-coronavirus-variants-mice;
News coverage 2: https://phys.org/news/2022-01-nano-sized-vesicles-ace2-receptor-infection.html
News coverage 3: https://www.thehamdenjournal.com/science/superpower-nano-bubbles-could-treat-and-prevent-covid-19-including-current-and-future-variants/39726/
News coverage 4: https://sciencebusiness.technewslit.com/?p=42843
News coverage 5: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/snorting-nano-bubbles-can-protect-against-covid19-variants-says-mice-study/
News coverage 6: https://scienmag.com/superpower-nano-bubbles-could-treat-prevent-current-and-future-strains-of-sars-cov-2/
News coverage 7: https://scitechdaily.com/superpower-nano-bubbles-could-treat-and-prevent-covid-19-including-current-and-future-variants/
News coverage 8: https://news.feinberg.northwestern.edu/2022/01/nano-bubbles-could-treat-prevent-current-and-future-strains-of-sars-cov-2/
News coverage 9: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/940623
News coverage 10: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/lMaVOaRL0Y0F0xCO-H89fQ (in Chinese)
Better together: circulating tumor cell clustering in metastatic cancer.
Schuster E, Taftaf R, Reduzzi C, Albert MK, Romero-Calvo I, Liu H.Trends Cancer. 2021 Nov;7(11):1020-1032. doi: 10.1016/j.trecan.2021.07.001. Epub 2021 Sep 1.PMID: 34481763 Free PMC article. Review.
Full Text:
Taftaf R, Liu X, Singh S, Jia Y, Dashzeveg NK, Hoffmann AD, El-Shennawy L, Ramos EK, Adorno-Cruz V, Schuster EJ, Scholten D, Patel D, Zhang Y, Davis AA, Reduzzi C, Cao Y, D’Amico P, Shen Y, Cristofanilli M, Muller WA, Varadan V, Liu H .Nat Commun. 2021 Aug 11;12(1):4867. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-25189-z.PMID: 34381029 Free PMC article.
Full Text:
Currently in progress
ExoMira Medicine Mission Statement:
- Establish exosome-based next generation biologic platform and unique “exotic medicine” pipelines for targeted therapy in cancer, viral infections, and other diseases
- Develop exoACE2 as a lead product to combat and neutralize broad strains and variants of SARS-CoV-2 as well as future merging corona viruses (SARS-CoV-3, -4, …)
- Engineer anti-cancer exosomes with targeting molecules against tumor initiating stem cells and metastasis-seeding stem cells
- Accelerate the biomedical translation from bench to bedside and file investigator new drugs (IND) for clinical trials
Theranostics: paper
Liu X, Adorno-Cruz V, Chang YF, Jia Y, Kawaguchi M, Dashzeveg NK, Taftaf R, Ramos EK, Schuster EJ, El-Shennawy L, Patel D, Zhang Y, Cristofanilli M, Liu H.Theranostics. 2021 Apr 30;11(13):6632-6643. doi: 10.7150/thno.57706. eCollection 2021.PMID: 33995681
Full text:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8120216/
Cancers paper
Chen W, Patel D, Jia Y, Yu Z, Liu X, Shi H, Liu H.Cancers (Basel). 2021 May 22;13(11):2550. doi: 10.3390/cancers13112550.PMID: 34067416 Free PMC article.
Full text: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6694/13/11/2550
The Liu Lab Hero’s celebrated Halloween this year fully masked up. The Halloween festivities were organized by our very own Erika Ramos to be fun, safe, and spooky!
Check out our latest research highlight on the US Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs page. The story talks about the groups work in circulating tumor cell clustering. https://cdmrp.army.mil/bcrp/research_highlights/20liu_highlight
Just a quick update from the Liu Lab on the global pandemic:
Lab members have been staying home and staying safe. Those lab heroes that are continuing to perform essential work are taking extra precautions and practicing social distancing in the lab. The lab is continuing to have meetings and strategize. In our last lab meeting, we had a special guest lecturer deliver a comprehensive overview of the current Covid-19 crisis: Covid-19 Update
Neale, 7, did all of the research and assembled this presentation all by himself! He is a brilliant young scientist and we are honored to have him as part of Liu Cluster!
Hope everyone is staying healthy and safe!
This year, the Liu Lab celebrated a year of hard work and accomplishments with a fun lunch in the city and some awesome matching jackets! Mission, Passion, Creation– words to research by!
Lunch with the lab, collaborators, and support staff– many people who make this research possible!
Winter in Chicago is beautiful!
Liu Cluster apparel– limited release, 2019.
This year, the Liu Lab got spooky and had a costume contest! The theme was animals. While Erika’s werewolf costume for the most votes (congrats!), everyone had a great time. We really brought a new meaning to animal research…
The Liu Lab zoo!
^ Congrats to Erika!
Who wore it best?
Lab meetings are always this funny.
Grad students from the Liu Lab presented their research at the 2019 Lurie Cancer Center Symposium and Scientific Poster Session. Lab member Rokana Taftaf won the Cancer Biology Cluster Travel Award for her poster on “The Role of ICAM1 in Breast Cancer Stemness and Metastasis.” Amazing work, Rokana!
The Liu Lab took to Grant Park in Chicago to participate in the Lurie Cancer Center’s Survivors’ Celebration Walk and 5K along with over 3,000 other survivors, supporters, researchers, friends, and family. The event raised nearly $370,000 for cancer research and was a great way to bring the greater community together for a cause near and dear to everyone’s heart.
This year, the Department of Pharmacology held their annual retreat on May 2 at the 1 North Michigan Conference Center in Chicago, Illinois. The retreat included many great talks by students, post-docs, and faculty from across the Pharmacology department, including two talks by our very own Valery Adorno-Cruz and Rokana Taftaf! Many members of the Liu Lab also presented posters at the event. And after a day of serious science, the lab participated in Lab Olympics, competing in events such as pipette shooting, pipette box filling, eppendorf ring toss, and pipette box stacking!
The Liu Lab celebrated the Chinese New Year of the Pig with our second annual dumpling making competition. Members of the Liu Lab, the Pharmacology Department, family, and friends came together to make a total of 454 dumplings! Three teams participated in three separate competitions: dumpling making, calligraphy, and ping-pong. The Yellow team dominated with 182 dumplings. The Green team proved their hand at calligraphy, and the red team took home the ping-pong trophy. But ultimately, everyone won as we all enjoyed a delicious meal and good fun!
The Liu Lab celebrated the holidays this year with a delicious lab lunch at Indian Garden restaurant. All lab members and our support staff enjoyed a chilly Chicago December afternoon with good food and good company. The holiday celebrations continued with the Department of Pharmacology sponsored holiday party. This year’s theme was Superheros!
Congratulations Liu Cluster Team, Especially Xia!! Great team work and tremendous efforts of Xia, Rokana, Madoka, Dr. Liu and all other team members who contributed to make it possible to publish our paper in this esteemed Journal. This achievement has provided us great inspiration to continue doing research work to achieve our ultimate goal of finding best possible cure for Breast cancer patients.
Homophilic CD44 interactions mediate tumor cell aggregation and polyclonal metastasis in patient-derived breast cancer models
Xia Liu, Rokana Taftaf, Madoka Kawaguchi, Ya-Fang Chang, Wenjing Chen, David Entenberg, Youbin Zhang, Lorenzo Gerratana, Simo Huang, Dhwani Patel, Elizabeth Tsui, Valery Adorno-Cruz, Steven Chirieleison, Yue Cao, Allison Harney, Shivani Patel, Antonia Patsialou, Yang Shen, Stefanie Avril, Hannah Gilmore, Justin Lathia, Derek Abbott, Massimo Cristofanilli, John Condeelis, Huiping Liu
10.1158/2159-8290.CD-18-0065
Link: http://cancerdiscovery.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2018/10/18/2159-8290.CD-18-0065
NU News Story: https://news.feinberg.northwestern.edu/2018/10/new-insights-into-cancer-metastasis/
It is our pleasure to announce that our very talented lab member Xia Liu won Komen CCR award. We are very proud of you, Xia! It’s a time to celebrate your hard work!
Congratulations to Xia, Andrew, Wenjing!!
“ Organotropism: new insights into molecular mechanisms of breast cancer metastasis”
Congratulations Rokana!
Congratulations Erika!
Congratulations Valery!
Congratulations to both Erika and Andrew for their review publication in Trends in Cancer Journal, focusing on cancer stem cells as well as challenges and new strategies to prevent them from metastasizing cancer in other organs.
New Opportunities and Challenges to Defeat Cancer Stem Cells. Ramos EK, Hoffmann AD, Gerson SL, Liu H. Trends Cancer. 2017 Nov;3(11):780-796. doi: 10.1016/j.trecan.2017.08.007. Epub 2017 Sep 21. PMID: 29120754
Emma successfully defended her thesis and had a public defense on 8/22/23
Dr. Huiping Liu's Lab 