Jianfeng Huang

I have been studying the interplay between metabolic disease and cancer for a long academic period. I studied the subject of cancer-associated cachexia under the supervision of Dr. Gerald Hoefler and gained my PhD degree at Medical University of Graz in Austria. As a visiting scholar I studied the cancer-associated metabolic abnormalities in liver in Dr. Richard Lehner lab at University of Alberta in Canada. Later I joined the laboratories of Drs. Maria Diaz-Meco and Jorge Moscat at SBP medical discovery institute (La Jolla) as a postdoc fellow to continue my study in the field of cancer metabolism research. I have been studying the critical symbiotic adipose tissue-tumor collaboration that could enable cancer metabolic fitness. Apart from the context of cancer, I am also investigating authophagic adaptors on thermogenesis/mitochondrial oxidation in adipocytes that have clear impact on the development of obesity and insulin resistance. I joined the laboratory of Dr. Edward Stites at the Salk Institute (La Jolla) for my second postdoctoral training, studying oncogenic RAS signaling in cancer biology. I believe that my unique research experiences would help the scientific community better understand how metabolic diseases could impact on cancer development and therapeutic efficacy at the systemic levels.