The primary research focus of the Du group is on neuroblastoma, with a goal to identify novel drugs/drug targets for neuroblastoma differentiation therapy. Neuroblastoma is the most common solid tumor of infancy and the most common extracranial solid tumor of childhood. It accounts for more than 7% of childhood cancer incidence and 15% of cancer-related deaths in childhood. Neuroblastoma arises from the neural crest cell precursors of the sympathetic nervous system that fails to complete the process of differentiation, which provides the basis for differentiation therapy, a treatment approach to induce the differentiation of the malignant cells and thereby leading to tumor growth arrest (Figure). However, there are only a limited number of differentiation agents that have been successfully used to treatment neuroblastoma, and over 50% of the patients treated with current differentiation agents still develop recurrence. Such poor outcomes demand the development of more effective differentiation agents.
On the other hand, the mechanisms that control neuroblastoma cell differentiation is still poorly understood, which poses an obstacle to the development of new differentiation agents.
My current research directions are (Figure): (1) Identifying novel genes and molecular pathways that control neuroblastoma cell differentiation, in order to discover new drug targets for developing differentiation therapies. (2) Discovering new differentiation agents from various sources of anti-cancer drugs, including microRNAs, natural products and synthetic small molecule compounds.
