NCKU professor wins rare grant for cancer work
(TAINAN, Taiwan, July 22, 2008 Taipei Times)—Dr. Nan-Shan Chang, a professor of the Institute of Molecular Medicine at National Cheng Kung University won a grant from the breast cancer research program of the US Department of Defense for his research on zfra, a zinc finger-like peptide that regulates programmed cell deaths, making him the first scientist in East Asia to obtain funding of this award.
According to president of NCKU, Academician Michael, M.C. Lai, it is difficult for a foreign scientist living outside the US to gain the Pentagon Breast Cancer Research Program Concept Award, which only five in 1,000 applicants have a chance of winning.
According to the statistics, the number of recipients of Pentagon research funding dropped from 557 around the world in 2000 to 105 last year, and further to 90 this year, because of the decline in US national research budgets.
Professor Chang, who holds a doctoral degree in immunology from the Medical University of South Carolina, worked at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, the Guthrie Research Institute in Pennsylvania and Upstate Medical University in Syracuse before he was invited in 2006 to lecture at NCKU.
Professor Chang's research has focused on how cancer cells evade immune attacks and prevent induced suicide. To understand how cancer cells develop resistance to tumor necrosis factor (TNF), Chang's research group has utilized functional cloning and microarray approaches to isolate genes, which may regulate cancer cell sensitivity to toxic cytokines. His research group's discovery of a tumor suppressor WOX1(also named WWOX or FOR), which enhances TNF function and is apparently involved in embryonic cell differentiation and cancer pathogen, has attracted the attention of cancer researchers from Britain, the US, Sweden, Belgium, Italy and Australia.
According to president of NCKU, Academician Michael, M.C. Lai, it is difficult for a foreign scientist living outside the US to gain the Pentagon Breast Cancer Research Program Concept Award, which only five in 1,000 applicants have a chance of winning.
According to the statistics, the number of recipients of Pentagon research funding dropped from 557 around the world in 2000 to 105 last year, and further to 90 this year, because of the decline in US national research budgets.
Professor Chang, who holds a doctoral degree in immunology from the Medical University of South Carolina, worked at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, the Guthrie Research Institute in Pennsylvania and Upstate Medical University in Syracuse before he was invited in 2006 to lecture at NCKU.
Professor Chang's research has focused on how cancer cells evade immune attacks and prevent induced suicide. To understand how cancer cells develop resistance to tumor necrosis factor (TNF), Chang's research group has utilized functional cloning and microarray approaches to isolate genes, which may regulate cancer cell sensitivity to toxic cytokines. His research group's discovery of a tumor suppressor WOX1(also named WWOX or FOR), which enhances TNF function and is apparently involved in embryonic cell differentiation and cancer pathogen, has attracted the attention of cancer researchers from Britain, the US, Sweden, Belgium, Italy and Australia.
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