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Wenwei Hu, PhD

Division of Radiation Cancer Biology

Dr. Hu received her M.B. degree from Zhejiang University School of Medicine and then received her Doctorate degree from the same university for research on mutagenesis induced by chemical carcinogen. Dr. Hu completed her postdoctoral training at New York University (NYU) Medical School focusing on DNA damage and repair. She then moved to University of Medicine and Dentistry o New Jersey (UMDNJ) continuing her postdoctoral training with Dr. Arnold Levine studying p53 and its signaling pathway. During this period, she discovered a novel physiological function of p53 in regulation of maternal implantation. Since 2008, she has been a faculty member at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey in New Brunswick, NJ. A major research interest of Dr. Hu’s group is to study the function and regulation of tumor suppressor p53, which in turn impacts upon tumorigenesis. Her group discovered that chronic psychological stress impairs wild type p53 function, which contributes to the promoting effect of chronic stress on tumorigenesis. Her group recently reported that p53 regulates innate immunity. The work from her group also made important contributions to understand the mechanisms of mutant p53 accumulation and gain of oncogenic activity in tumors. In addition, Dr. Hu studies the function of LIF, a cytokine that is a p53 target, in tumorigenesis.

 

Publications

  1. ​Hu W., Feng Z., Teresky A., Levine A.J. (2007) p53 regulates maternal reproduction through LIF. (with commentary) Nature, 450:721-724.
  2. Feng Z., Liu L., Zhang C., Zheng T., Wang J., Lin M., Zhao Y., Wang X, Levine A. Hu W. (2012) Chronic restraint stress attenuates p53 function and promotes tumorigenesis. PNAS, 109:7013-7018.
  3. Yu H., Yue X., Zhao Y., Li X., Wu L., Zhang C., Liu Z., Lin K., Xu-Monette Z., Young K., Liu J., Shen Z., Feng Z., Hu W. (2014) LIF negatively regulates tumor suppressor p53 through Stat3/ID1/MDM2 in colorectal cancers. Nature Communications, 5:5218
  4. Yue X., Zhang C., Zhao Y., Liu J., Lin A, Tan V., Drake J., Liu L., Boateng M., Li J., Feng Z., Hu W. (2017) Gain-of-function mutant p53 activates small GTPase Rac1 through SUMOylation to promote tumor progression. Genes Dev., 31: 1641-1654. doi:10.1101/gad.301564.117
  5. Liu J., Zhang C., Zhao Y., Yue X., Wu H., Huang S., Chen J., Tomsky K., Xie H., Khella C.A., Gatza M.L., Xia D., Gao J., Haffty B.G., Hu W., Feng Z. (2017) Parkin targets HIF-1α for ubiquitination and degradation to inhibit breast tumor progression. Nature Communications 28: 1823.
  6. Zhao Y., Wu L., Yue X., Zhang C., Wang J., Li J., Sun X., Zhu Y., Feng Z., Hu W. (2018) A polymorphism in the tumor suppressor p53 affects aging and longevity in mouse models. eLife pii: e34701. doi: 10.7554/eLife.34701.
  7. Liu J., Zhang C., Wu H., Sun X., Li Y., Huang S., Yue X., Lu S., Shen Z., Su X., White E., Haffty B., Hu W., Feng Z. (2020) Parkin ubiquitinates phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase to suppress serine synthesis and tumor progression. JCI. 130:3253-3269.
  8. Yue X., Wu F., Wang J., Kim K., Santhamma B., Dileep KV., Zhang K., Viswanadhapalli S., Vadlamudi R., Ahmend G., Feng Z., Nickisch K., Hu W. (2020) EC330, a small molecule compound, is a potential novel inhibitor of LIF signaling. J Mol Cell Biol. 12:477-480.
  9. Wang H., Wang J., Zhao Y., Zhang X., Liu J., Zhang C., Haffty B., Verzi M., Zhang L., Gao N., Feng Z., Hu W. (2020) LIF is essential for ISC function and protects against radiation-induced gastrointestinal syndrome. Cell Death Dis. 11:588.
  10. Chang C., Wang J., Zhao Y., Liu J., Yang X., Yue X., Wang H., Zhou F., Inclan-Rico J., Ponessa J., Xie P., Zhang L., Siracusa M., Feng Z., Hu W (2021) Tumor suppressor p53 regulates intestinal type 2 immunity. Nature Communications 12:3371.