Gangning Liang
University of Southern California, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Cancers of the urinary tract are often caught late and tend to come back, and the tests used to follow patients are either invasive or miss early disease. A promising alternative reads chemical tags on DNA.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Genetics
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
DNA methylation
epigenetics
bladder cancer
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Test whether DNA methylation marker panels measured in urine sediments can detect residual tumor cells after transurethral resection of bladder tumor in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer patients.
- Follow methylation markers in urine sediments over time as a surveillance tool for bladder cancer recurrence after tumor resection, in a cohort of 60 patients.
- Track the longitudinal trajectory of methylation-quantified tumor burden in urine sediments of 70 muscle invasive bladder cancer patients and test its association with response to chemotherapy given before surgery.
- Characterize DNA methylation markers specific to upper tract urothelial carcinoma, and to its aggressive forms, in primary tumor specimens.
- Validate the upper tract urothelial carcinoma methylation markers in patient urine sediments for diagnosis, prognosis and detection of recurrence.
More about the research
DNA methylation is a small chemical mark added to DNA that can switch genes off, and tumors carry characteristic patterns of these marks. Because methylation marks are chemically stable and can be measured precisely, and because tumor DNA shows up in cells shed into urine, these marks can be read non-invasively. Both projects here build methylation marker panels from patient urine and tissue to detect urinary tract cancers earlier, judge how aggressive they are, and track how they respond to treatment.
Why it matters
Patients with bladder cancer face repeated invasive procedures to check for recurrence, and patients with upper tract urothelial carcinoma are often mis-staged before surgery. Urine-based DNA methylation tests could allow earlier, non-invasive detection of returning tumors, show during treatment whether chemotherapy is working, and help distinguish aggressive from indolent tumors. That could spare patients unnecessary chemotherapy and its side effects, avoid delays to surgery, and support more individualized care.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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University of Washington, WA·Medicine & Clinical Research
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Robert Svatek
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test in a phase II double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial whether one year of eRapa, an encapsulated oral form of the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin, reduces relapse in patients newly diagnosed with non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer, using standard surveillance to estimate recurrence-free survival.
The school
University of Southern California: 47 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 882 research doctorates a year.
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