Professor of Cancer Biology in Medicine, Academic Institute
Houston Methodist
Weill Cornell Medical College
Chih-Chi Andrew Hu, PhD, earned his Bachelor’s degree from China Medical University and Master’s degree from National Sun Yat-Sen University in Taiwan. During his military service as a second lieutenant, he taught histology and performed research at the National Defense Medical Center. Dr. Hu pursued his doctoral training at the New York University School of Medicine (2001-2006) to study membrane protein assembly on the surface of the urinary bladder. Dr. Hu pursued his postdoctoral training with Dr. Hidde L. Ploegh, at the Whitehead Institute/Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2006-2010) to study the functions of the endoplasmic reticulum in normal B cells. He became an Assistant Professor at the Moffitt Cancer Center/University of South Florida (2010-2014) and was later recruited to the Wistar Institute/University of Pennsylvania as an Associate Professor (2014-2019). He was promoted to Full Professor at the same institute in 2020 and recruited to the Houston Methodist Research Institute in December 2020.
My laboratory investigates the biology of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) in normal and malignant B cells. The work from my laboratory establishes that inhibiting the IRE-1/XBP-1s pathway of the ER stress response and activating IRE-1’s interacting protein, STING, are effective therapeutic strategies for B cell cancer and graft-versus-host disease. We also develop novel small molecules to target these pathways. We continue to identify and characterize ER-resident proteins that can be targeted for therapy of human diseases.
