Dr. Lee is an assistant professor and CPRIT scholar in the Department of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology and a faculty member in the Center for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, McGovern Medical School. Dr. Lee’s research is dedicated to understand cancer pathological mechanisms by applying patient-specific iPSCs and/or hESCs. He has established the first human Li-Fraumeni syndrome (LFS) disease model by using LFS patient-specific iPSCs to delineate the molecular mechanisms caused by mutant p53 in osteosarcoma. Currently, he focus on modeling a panel of familial cancer syndromes with predisposition to osteosarcoma by both patient-specific iPSC and TALEN/CRISPR genetically engineered hESC approaches in order to explore the central pathological mechanisms triggering osteosarcoma development.
Research
Publications
- Tu J, Huo Z, Gingold J, Zhao R, Shen J, Lee DF. The histogenesis of Ewing Sarcoma. Cancer Rep Rev. 1(2):1-2, 2017.
- Lu J, Song G, Tang Q, Yin J, Zou C, Zhao Z, Xie X, Xu H, Huang G, Wang J, Lee DF, Khokha R, Yang H, Shen J. MiR-26a inhibits stem cell-like phenotype and tumor growth of osteosarcoma by targeting Jagged1. Oncogene. 36(2):231-241, 2017.
- Li C, Wang S, Xing Z, Lin A, Liang K, Song J, Hu Q, Yao J, Chen Z, Park P, Hawke DH, Zhou J, Zhou Y, Zhang S, Liang H, Hung MC, Gallick G, Lee DF, Lin C, and Yang L: A ROR1-HER3-LncRNA signaling axis modulates the Hippo-YAP pathway to regulate bone metastasis. Nature Cell Biology (In press)
- Gingold J, Zhou R, Lemischka IR, Lee DF. Modeling cancer with pluripotent stem cells. Trends Cancer. 2(9):485-494, 2016
- Lee DF, Walsh MJ, Aguilo F. ZNF217/ZFP217 meets chromatin and RNA (2016). Trends Biochem Sci. 41(12):986-988, 2016.
- Li CW, Xia W, Lim SO, Hsu JL, Huo L, Wu Y, Li LY, Lai CC, Chang SS, Hsu YH, Sun HL, Kim J, Yamaguchi H, Lee DF, Wang H, Wang Y, Chou CK, Hsu JM, Lai YJ, LaBaff AM, Ding Q, Ko HW, Tsai FJ, Tsai CH, Hortobagyi GN, Hung MC. AKT1 Inhibits Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition in Breast Cancer through Phosphorylation-Dependent Twist1 Degradation.Cancer Res. 76(6):1451-62, 2016.