My early research interests have been focused on the development of Toll-like receptor (TLR) ligands. I have experience from the earliest phase of drug discovery with in vitro screening development all the way to application-based approach utilizing preclinical animal models. Inter-disciplinary collaborations among chemists, immunologists, microbiologists, infectious disease experts and oncologists have been quite successful on developing TLR agonists as vaccine adjuvant and on therapeutic applications on cancers.
Developing preclinical animal xenograft models and therapeutic strategies for cancer stem cells has been my main research focus and expertise in the past several years. In the area on cancer stem cells in lymphoid malignancies, I have been focused on B cell malignancies specifically on chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and multiple myeloma (MM). My goals are to identify specific cancer populations with self-renewal capacity, to establish in vivo disease models and to evaluate various inhibitors on self-renewal capacity. I have also identified and developed small molecular inhibitors and monoclonal antibodies targeted on the WNT signaling for cancer therapeutics.
