Dr. Wei Li, Ph.D., professor, Department of Dermatology, USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, will present, "Discovery of the extracellular role for heat shock protein-90 (Hsp90) in wound healing and tumor progression."
With an introduction by David T. Woodley, M.D.
Monday, December 17
12 noon - 1 p.m.
Harlyne J. Norris Research Tower, Lower Ground
1450 Biggy St.
USC Health Sciences Campus
View the live webcast online.
Only studies of the past seven years have revealed a picture for when, how and why Hsp90 gets exported by both normal and tumor cells. Normal cells secrete Hsp90 in response to tissue injury. Tumor cells have managed to constitutively secrete Hsp90 for tissue invasion. A well-characterized function of secreted Hsp90a is to promote cell motility, a crucial event for both wound healing and cancer. The pro-motility activity of secreted Hsp90a resides within a 115-aa fragment, called F-5, between the linker region and middle domain. In normal tissue, topical application of F-5 promotes acute and diabetic wound healing far more effectively than US FDA-approved conventional growth factor therapy. In cancer, drugs that selectively target the F-5 region of secreted Hsp90 by cancer cells is predicted to be more effective and less toxic than those that target the ATPase of the intracellular Hsp90. USC owns both patents of these applications.
About Wei Li, Ph.D.
After receiving his college education in Biology Major from Xinjiang University, People’s Republic of China, Dr. Li came the US in 1985. He received a MS degree in 1988 and a PhD degree in 1991 from the Department of Developmental Biology and Cancer at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York City. Following a two-year post-doctoral/instructor fellowship with Dr. Joseph Schlessinger (Professor and Chairman) in the Department of Pharmacology at New York University Medical Center, he joined the faculty of the Ben May Institute for Cancer Research at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1993 as an Assistant Professor. He came to USC in the beginning of 1999. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Dermatology and the USC-Norris Cancer Center and the Director of the USC GMCB Graduate Program. His research programs have been supported from NIH since 1995.