Jian Zhao
University of Oklahoma, OK·Biomedical Engineering
Cancer becomes deadly when it spreads to other organs, a process called metastasis, and spreading cancer cells appear to rely heavily on changes in how they use fats. Saturated and unsaturated fatty acids may affect cancer cells differently, changing how they make energy, build their membranes and send internal signals.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Engineering
Chemistry
- Topics
cancer metastasis
breast cancer
lipid metabolism
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2026
What they work on
- Build and validate O-MIR microscopy, which pairs nanosecond-pulsed mid-infrared photothermal imaging with intensity diffraction tomography, to image chemical bonds in 3D at about 250 nm lateral resolution using microsphere and fatty acid test samples.
- Use click-free bio-orthogonal probes, small chemical tags that work in living cells without an extra reaction step, to follow fatty acids in the cell-silent infrared window and the fingerprint window in real time.
- Compare non-metastatic and metastatic breast cancer cell lines under metabolic inhibition to measure how saturated and unsaturated fatty acids differ in uptake, location within the cell and metabolic processing.
- Identify fatty acid metabolic changes that promote or hold back metastatic behavior as candidate markers and enzyme targets for limiting breast cancer spread.
More about the research
Exactly how the saturation of a fatty acid links to metastasis is still poorly understood, partly because current imaging tools struggle to follow fats inside living cells. Fluorescence imaging needs labels and fades with light exposure, and Raman-based imaging, which reads chemical bonds from scattered light, collects signal slowly.
Why it matters
Patients with breast cancer that spreads to other organs could eventually benefit if this work pinpoints which fatty acid processes help metastasis. The project aims to identify metabolic markers and therapeutic targets that could guide drugs aimed at fat-processing enzymes or other metabolic interventions to reduce spread. The label-free 3D chemical microscope may also give other researchers a faster way to follow metabolism in living cells.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
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The school
University of Oklahoma: 11 labs on PI Pages, $474M a year on research, 225 research doctorates a year.
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