Block Lectureship Junior Faculty Award winner excited to learn from acclaimed expert in cell biology and cancer
Li-Chun Tu, PhD, says she sometimes feels like she’s in a dream.
Such is her elation over being selected as the 2024 recipient of the Block Lectureship Junior Faculty Award, through which she will receive a two-year mentorship with Sir Paul Nurse, OM, CH, FRS, director of the Francis Crick Institute in London and co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Dr. Nurse is the 26th recipient of the Herbert and Maxine Block Memorial Lectureship Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cancer, a $50,000 prize that the OSUCCC – James gives each year to an internationally known cancer researcher who then visits Ohio State to accept the honor, lecture about his or her work, and select a junior faculty member to mentor.
From a small field of candidates, Dr. Nurse chose Dr. Tu, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Pharmacology in Ohio State’s College of Medicine since 2019. She also is in the Molecular Carcinogenesis and Chemoprevention Program at the OSUCCC – James.
“I’m extremely grateful to the Block family for supporting cancer research at Ohio State and to Dr. Nurse for selecting me as this year’s Junior Faculty Award recipient,” Dr. Tu says. “This is a great honor that I believe will impact my research in understanding genome biology in cancer.”
Dr. Tu is a basic-science researcher who studies the origin and underlying physical principles of human genome organization and dynamics in the cell nucleus in hopes of resolving target genetic alterations, or mutations, that lead to cancer. She believes she will gain much insight from Dr. Nurse’s vast knowledge of cell biology, especially in the area of cell-cycle regulation — including the four-stage process by which cells grow and divide — and associated implications for cancer treatment.
“Dr. Nurse is an expert in the regulation of the cell cycle, which is a fundamental process that nearly all mammalian cells undergo every day, dividing and generating more cells,” Dr. Tu says. “However, this process goes awry and becomes uncontrollable in cancer. When cells are crazily dividing, tumors form, making a huge growing mass that destroys surrounding tissue. So, a distorted cell cycle is, if not the first, at least an early stage of cancer development.”
She explains that the biologic regulators in this process are proteins called cyclins that work with several co-factors.
“Cyclins and the co-factors regulate the cell cycle by turning on and off certain genes, to promote whether the cell has to move forward or stop. If you can stop cancer cells from dividing, they will not grow after that and you can potentially cure the cancer,” Dr. Tu says.
“Dr. Nurse and I both work on fundamental questions of how cells regulate gene expression, studying not only how normal cells work but how errors occur in diseased cells … how cancer cells have messed up the normal mechanisms and whether we can fix it or stop it,” she adds. “I’m looking forward to having these discussions with him.”
A native of Taiwan, Dr. Tu came in 2006 to the United States, where she earned a PhD in biochemistry and biophysics at Texas A&M University and completed postdoctoral training in molecular biology, cell biology and biophysics at the University of Massachusetts before joining the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center.
Through her training and subsequent studies, Dr. Tu is well-versed in basic-science research with clinical applications. At UMass, she and collaborators developed technologies called CRISPRainbow and CRISPR-Sirius, innovative forms of live-cell single-molecule microscopy. These non-invasive color-coded imaging techniques have been patented and are recognized for their potential to make paradigm-shifting discoveries in human genome dynamics that could improve cancer treatment.
The Block Junior Faculty Award also will provide Dr. Tu with $25,000 to further her research. Much of her current research has used bone cancer as a model, but she hopes to expand her cell-cycle studies to other cancers as well, including pediatric cancers.
She’s eager to begin her mentorship with Dr. Nurse. “I never think you can have too many mentors in science, especially when you get to work with such an established researcher who can offer valuable guidance. This is an exciting opportunity for me.”