Yu-Cheng Lee

• Professor (Assistant) at Taipei Medical University

The prevalence and deaths from esophageal cancer (EC) have recently increased. Although therapeutic strategies depend on the EC stage and recurrence, such as surgical intervention, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, chemoradiation therapy, targeted therapy, and immunotherapy, a more effective and novel treatment for EC is still required. This review...

Bladder cancer is a prevalent but currently understudied cancer type and patient outcomes are poor when it progresses to the muscle-invasive stage. Current research in bladder cancer focuses on the genetic and epigenetic alterations occurring within the urothelial cell compartment; however, the stromal compartment receives less attention. Dynamic c...

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is a common and fatal malignancy with an increasing incidence worldwide. Over the past decade, concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) with or without surgery is an emerging therapeutic approach for locally advanced ESCC. Unfortunately, many patients exhibit poor response or develop acquired resistance to CCRT....

RNF144A is a DNA damage-induced E3 ubiquitin ligase that targets proteins involved in genome instability for degradation, e.g., DNA-PKcs and BMI1. RNF144A is frequently mutated or epigenetically silenced in cancer, providing the rationale to evaluate RNF144A loss of function in tumorigenesis. Here we report that RNF144A-deficient mice are more pron...

Metastases account for the majority of cancer deaths. While certain steps of the metastatic cascade are well characterized, identification of targets to block this process remains a challenge. Host factors determining metastatic colonization to secondary organs are particularly important for exploration, as those might be shared among different can...

Background: Muscle-invasive bladder cancers (MIBCs) cause approximately 150 000 deaths per year worldwide. Survival for MIBC patients is heterogeneous, with no clinically validated molecular markers that predict clinical outcome. Non-MIBCs (NMIBCs) generally have favorable outcome; however, a portion progress to MIBC. Hence, development of a progn...

Chemotherapy has been shown to enrich cancer stem cells in tumors. Recently, we demonstrated that administration of chemotherapy to human bladder cancer xenografts could trigger a wound-healing response that mobilizes quiescent tumor stem cells into active proliferation, leading to a loss of sensitivity to chemotherapy. Different bladder cancer xen...

Purpose: Non-muscle invasive bladder cancers (NMIBC) are generally curable, while ~15% progresses into muscle-invasive cancer with poor prognosis. While efforts have been made to identify genetic alternations associated with progression, the extracellular matrix (ECM) microenvironment remains largely unexplored. Type I collagen is a major componen...

Concurrent chemoradiation therapy (CCRT) is the predominant treatment in esophageal cancer, however resistance to therapy and tumor recurrence are exceedingly common. Elevated ERBB2/Her2 may be at least partially responsible for both the high rates of recurrence and resistance to CCRT. This receptor tyrosine kinase is upregulated in 10-20% of esoph...

Pin1 is a peptidyl-prolyl isomerase which plays a critical role in many diseases including cancer and Alzheimer's disease. The essential role of Pin1 is to affect stability, localization or function of phosphoproteins by catalyzing structural changes. Among the collection of Pin1 substrates, many have been shown to be involved in regulating cell cy...

Pin1 is a peptidyl-prolyl isomerase which plays a critical role in many diseases including cancer and Alzheimer's disease. The essential role of Pin1 is to affect stability, localization or function of phosphoproteins by catalyzing structural changes. Among the collection of Pin1 substrates, many have been shown to be involved in regulating cell cy...

Background Pin1 promotes oncogenesis by regulating multiple oncogenic signaling. In this study, we investigated the involvement of Pin1 in tumor progression and in the prognosis of human esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC).ResultsWe observed that proliferation, clonogenicity and tumorigenesis of CE81T cells were inhibited by Pin1 knockdown. W...

Upregulation of Pin1 was shown to advance the functioning of several oncogenic pathways. It was recently shown that Pin1 is potentially an excellent prognostic marker and can also serve as a novel therapeutic target for prostate cancer. However, the molecular mechanism of Pin1 overexpression in prostate cancer is still unclear. In the present study...

Heat shock proteins (HSPs), which are members of the chaperone family of proteins, are essential factors for cellular responses to environmental stressors, such as hyperthermia, and are antiapoptotic. The transcription of HSPs is mainly controlled by heat shock transcription factor 1 (HSF1). In response to environmental stress, HSF1 forms a trimer,...

Pin1 was the first prolyl isomerase identified that is involved in cell division. The mechanism how Pin1 acts as a negative regulator of mitotic activity in G2 phase remains unclear. In our present study, we found that Aurora A can interact with and phosphorylate Pin1 at Ser16, which suppresses the G2/M function of Pin1 by disrupting its binding ab...

Proceedings: AACR 104th Annual Meeting 2013; Apr 6-10, 2013; Washington, DC Colon cancer has high incidence rate in the world and the early stage of colon cancer can be cured by surgical therapy. However, it remains difficult to predict the prognostic outcome of colon cancer patients. STK4 is considered as a potential tumor suppressor, which plays...

Akt activation has been implicated broadly in tumorigenesis, but the basis for its dysregulation in cancer cells is incompletely understood. In this study, we sought to clarify a regulatory role for the Akt-binding carboxy-terminal modulator protein (CTMP), which has been controversial. In evaluating CTMP expression in paired normal– tumor specimen...

The synthesis and degradation of hBora is important for the regulation of mitotic entry and exist. In G 2 phase, hBora can complex with Aurora A to activate Plk1 and control mitotic entry. However, whether the post-translational modification of hBora is relevant to the mitotic entry still unclear. Here, we used the LC-MS/MS phosphopeptide mapping a...

Camptothecin (CPT) and its derivatives are powerful anticancer agents, but these compounds are chemically unstable due to their α-hydroxy lactone six-membered E-ring structure, which is essential for trapping topoisomerase I (topo I)-DNA cleavage complexes. Moreover, the reversibility of trapping the topo I-DNA cleavage complex and the tight bindin...

Platinum-based chemotherapy is the first-line treatment for non-small cell lung cancer, but recurrence occurs in most patients. Recent evidence suggests that CD133+ cells are the cause of drug resistance and tumor recurrence. However, the correlation between chemotherapy and regulation of CD133+ cells has not been investigated methodically. In this...

Phosphorylation of endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) is key mechanism in response to various forms of cellular stimulation. Through protein nitration by peroxynitrite, eNOS is believed to be responsible for the major abnormalities in several important neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's (AD) and Parkinson's diseases (PD). Recent...