Hanhui Ma, PhDAssociate Professor

My long-term goal is to discover disease-related epigenetic alterations (EpiRead), and their mechanisms of action, and utilize the discoveries for either prevention or epigenetic therapy of the disease (EpiMod). There are three major types of epigenetic modifications for the control of gene activity: DNA methylation (5mC), histone modifications (H3K27ac, H3K9me3, H3K27me3), and RNA-associated epigenetic modifications (m6A, microRNAs, LncRNAs). In the next five years, I will focus on 1) the identification of cancer, neurological disorders, or aging-specific epigenetic alterations; 2) the development of an epigenome editing toolbox to recover or rescue disease-related epigenetic alterations; 3) evaluating the therapeutic potential of aberrant epigenetic alterations in the animal model and preclinical studies by the AAV or LNP delivery systems.   

One of my lab's new directions is immunogene therapy. We are currently focusing on the development of nucleic acid drugs for the treatment of solid tumors and their preclinical research. This includes: 1) Developing tumor-specific targeted AAV (TsAAV) and LNP (TsLNP) to achieve intratumoral-specific expression of tumor immunomodulatory factors such as Bispecific T-cell Engager (BiTE), cytokines, chemokine etc; 2) Overcoming the blood-tumor barrier (BTB) and remodeling the tumor immune microenvironment (TME); 3) Achieving highly efficient activation of tumor-infiltrating T cells (TILs) within tumors to specifically kill cancer cells; 4) Conducting safety and efficacy evaluations in disease animal models with clinical application value, such as liver cancer and lung cancer, among others.