Speaker Profile
Jianhua Luo

Jianhua Luo MD, PhD

Anatomic Pathology
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America

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Dr. Luo has been studying molecular mechanisms of human malignancies in the last 35 years. Currently, he is a Professor of Pathology and Director of the High Throughput Genome Center at the University of Pittsburgh. In the last 29 years, Dr. Luo has been largely focusing on the genetic and molecular mechanism of human cancers such as hepatocellular carcinoma. He is one of the pioneers in utilizing high throughput gene expression and genome analyses to analyze field effects in prostate cancer and liver cancer. He is also the first in using methylation array and whole genome methylation sequencing to analyze prostate cancer. He and his colleague helped to develop an ultra-low error synthetic long-read sequencing technology called LOOPSeq that can be utilized to quantify mRNA isoforms and mutation isoform distributions.

Recently, his group discovered 18 novel fusion genes in prostate, liver and colon cancers. Subsequently, his group discovered that many of these fusion genes are recurrent in many other types of human cancers. His group also developed a genome intervention strategy targeting at the chromosomal breakpoint of the fusion gene to treat cancers. Through collaboration, he and his colleagues developed a machine learning algorithm based on exome mutation and gene expression in liver cancers to predict the clinical outcomes of liver transplantation for liver cancer patients. Overall, these findings advance our understanding of how cancer develops and behaves and lay down the foundation for better future diagnosis and treatment for human malignancies.

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