Invited Speakers

As a physician-scientist with extensive training in clinical medicine and basic science research, I’m dedicated to tackling important biological questions linked to human diseases and eager to translate novel experimental findings into clinically useful therapeutics. Since establishing my lab in 2014, my research has focused on identifying novel mediators/pathways of cardiovascular diseases, particularly in cardiac and organ fibrosis, atherosclerosis, and cardiac regeneration. Using a multidisciplinary approach that includes systems biology, molecular, cellular, and animal studies, we have identified several novel molecular determinants, including long noncoding RNAs (Circulation 2014) and the ER protein TXNDC5 (Circ Res 2018), that are critical to the development of cardiac fibrosis and cardiomyopathy. These results not only shed new light on the pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases but also hint at novel therapeutic opportunities by targeting these pathogenic mediators/pathways. We have applied our findings to non-cardiac fibrotic disorders, including pulmonary, kidney, liver and even tumor fibrosis (Nat Commun 2020, JCI 2021, Gut 2022, Nat Commun 2026, in press). Additionally, we have revealed a critical role of mechanosensitive molecules like miR-92a (PNAS 2021), TXNDC5 (Sci Adv 2022) and METTL7a (Circulation 2026, in press) in disturbed flow-induced endothelial dysfunction and atherosclerosis. Our development of nanomedicine targeting these factors in the endothelium offers new treatments for atherosclerotic vascular diseases. Using comparative transcriptomics across regenerative (zebrafish, neonatal mice) and non-regenerative (medaka, adult mice) models, we identified N-Cadherin in cardiomyocytes (Nat Commun 2025) and specific macrophage populations (eLife 2023, PNAS 2026) as essential drivers of cardiac repair. We are currently developing targeted therapies to harness these mechanisms, aiming to restore cardiac function in heart failure patients.

Dr. Muh-Hwa Yang is Chair Professor at the Institute of Clinical Medicine and Senior Vice President of National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. He also serves as Director of the Department of Oncology at Taipei Veterans General Hospital. He received both his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from National Yang Ming University. He completed his training in internal medicine and hematology-oncology at Taipei Veterans General Hospital, where he continues to practice clinical oncology, particularly in head and neck cancer, while leading an active translational research program. Dr. Yang is a physician-scientist whose research focuses on the mechanisms of cancer metastasis, especially epithelial plasticity in cancer progression. He has made important contributions to understanding migration modes associated with clinical metastatic patterns and is recognized for pioneering work on the hybrid epithelial-mesenchymal state, particularly in collective migration during metastasis. His laboratory has published extensively in leading journals, including Nature Cell Biology, Nature Communications, Cancer Cell, Cell Reports Medicine, and Cell Reports. More recently, his research has expanded to the dynamic interplay between tumor cells and host cells during cancer progression. He has received several research honors in Taiwan and currently serves as Track Chair for Head and Neck Cancer at the European Society for Medical Oncology in 2025.

Dana Ishay-Ronen, MD PhD, is a senior oncologist and a group leader at Sheba Medical Center, Israel, and the Scientific Lead of the 'Cancer Cell Plasticity and Early Tumor Interception' research focus area within the Einstein Center for Early Disease Interception at N. Rajewsky research group, BIMSB-MDC, Berlin. Her research sits at the intersection of cancer cell plasticity, epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), and translational oncology. A central theme of her work is exploiting cancer cell plasticity therapeutically — including a trans-differentiation approach that redirects dedifferentiated cancer cells into adipocytes to impede invasivness and metastasis. Her lab investigates precancer events in normal mammary epithelium, demonstrating that aberrant epithelial plasticity is an early driver of tumorigenesis in BRCA1-pathogenic variant carriers. She uses patient-derived organoids, spatial transcriptomics, and deep learning-based image analysis to bridge basic cancer biology with clinical insight. Her work is supported by competitive national and international grants including Basser Center for BRCA, Einstein Center, BSF, and ISF.

Dr Holly Barker is a Senior Research Fellow at WEHI, co-leading the WEHI-Stafford Fox Rare Cancer Program (WEHI-SFRCP), which has consented >950 individuals with rare cancers to enable molecular profiling and preclinical model development. She leads projects with a focus on aggressive uterine malignancies, spanning genomics, organoid and PDX model development, drug screening and clinical translation. Dr Barker’s Cancer Research paper established the biological basis for treating ovarian carcinosarcoma (OCS), an aggressive rare cancer with no approved therapies. Her team demonstrated that epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) drives OCS tumorigenesis and confers sensitivity to eribulin, a microtubule inhibitor, using PDX models. This directly led to patient benefit in an area of profound unmet need, underpinning the EPOCH international clinical trial (she attracted >$7.5M in-kind drug support from Eisai & MSD), for which she is Translational Research Lead.

Prior to her involvement in the WEHI-SFRCP, Dr Barker spent eight years as a postdoc at the Institute of Cancer Research in London. Her research focused on the tumour microenvironment (TME) in breast and head and neck cancers. With respect to breast cancer, she focused on the role of the collagen cross-linker, LOXL2, in breast cancer cell invasion and metastasis and supported the development of LOXL2 inhibitors by Gilead Sciences. Dr Barker currently holds a Victorian Cancer Agency Mid-Career Research Fellowship to undertake multi-omic analysis of uterine serous carcinoma and perform drug screening to define combination therapies involving HER2- and PARP-targeting agents. She also holds a philanthropic uLMS grant expanding her previously uLMS work to spatial transcriptomics and organoid studies. Overall, her research projects cover topics, such as EMT, DNA damage repair, genomic instability, cell signalling, matrix biology and metastasis, and employ a range of techniques, including spatial transcriptomics, single-cell RNA sequencing, multiplex immunofluorescent imaging, cell surface proteomics, flow cytometry, drug screening, organoid development and 3D bioprinting.

Dr. Hsuan Liu received her Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine from National Taiwan University and is currently a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Chang Gung University. She also serves as Director of the Next Generation Sequencing Core Laboratory at the Molecular Medicine Research Center, Chang Gung University.

Her research focuses on cancer biology, functional genomics, systems biology, bioinformatics, precision medicine, and spatial omics. Her laboratory integrates genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and spatial transcriptomics to investigate tumor heterogeneity and disease mechanisms.

Her recent work explores tumor ecosystems, cell-cell interactions, and biomarker discovery through integrative multi-omics and spatial biology approaches. She is also actively involved in advancing sequencing and spatial omics platforms to support translational biomedical research and precision medicine applications.

Professor Dean Fennell DSc FMedSci is a clinician scientist and international leader in mesothelioma research. He has designed and led several investigator-initiated trials spanning phase 1 through phase III, including the first precision medicine platform study for patients with mesothelioma (MIST), and its follow up - SELECT.

He is chair of the UK3CR mesothelioma subcommittee, past-president of the International mesothelioma interest group, past NCRI mesothelioma chair, co-author of UK BTS, and European (ESMO, ERS) mesothelioma treatment guidelines and served two terms on the EORTC board. His lab is currently pioneering novel precision medicine strategies and the study of tumour evolution in mesothelioma.

Professor Fennell held two CRUK clinician scientist and MRC doctoral fellowships. He originally trained in pharmacology (1st class) and medicine at UCL , then completed training in London. Prof. Fennell has published 190 peer reviewed articles in journals including The Lancet, Lancet Oncology, New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, & Nature communications

In 2023 he was awarded the IMIG Senior Investigator medal and MARF Pioneer Award for his work in the field, and was elected a fellow of the academy of medical sciences in 2024.

Paul Macklin is a mathematician and Professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering at Indiana University. His lab develops the award-winning PhysiCell simulation framework as a “virtual laboratory” to study complex biological systems, with a special focus on cancer. As part of this work, he recently released a new modeling grammar that allows rapid development of simulation models that can be used to interactively explore the “rules” of cancer systems and run virtual experiments. He is working with teams of biologists, bioinformaticians, modelers, and clinicians to combine these tools with artificial intelligence for virtual clinical trials, and to create digital twins for the future of personalized predictive cancer medicine.

Dr. Sheng is currently a Professor of Developmental Morphogenesis at Kumamoto University, Japan. He obtained his Ph.D. in developmental genetics from the Rockefeller University in 1997 under the supervision of fly geneticist Claude Desplan and received his postdoctoral training in molecular embryology in the laboratory of Claudio Stern at Columbia University and University College London. Before joining Kumamoto University as a full professor in late 2015, Dr. Sheng had directed the Laboratory for Early Embryogenesis at RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (Kobe, Japan) as a team leader and senior investigator (2004-2015). His laboratory uses the avian model and his research focuses on epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), embryonic stem cells, primordial germ cells, gastrulation, mesoderm differentiation, and extraembryonic tissue development.

Dr. Anna Jang is a professor in the Department of Biotechnology and Bioindustry Sciences at National Cheng Kung University. Her research focuses on developmental and cell biology using Drosophila melanogaster as an in vivo model system to investigate the spatiotemporal regulation of collective cell migration and tissue morphogenesis.

Her laboratory studies border cell migration during Drosophila oogenesis, a powerful model for understanding collective cell movement relevant to embryonic development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. By combining genetics, cell biology, and advanced imaging approaches, her research explores how vesicle trafficking, cell adhesion remodeling, and steroid hormone signaling coordinate migratory behavior during development.

Recent work from Dr. Jang’s group has identified critical roles for RabGDI-mediated vesicle trafficking in regulating E-cadherin turnover, cholesterol transport, and ecdysone biosynthesis to control the timing of collective migration. Her studies further reveal how intracellular membrane trafficking and inter-organelle communication contribute to developmental signaling and tissue organization in vivo. Through these studies, her laboratory aims to uncover fundamental mechanisms governing the temporal control of cell behavior during development.

In addition to her research activities, Dr. Jang actively contributes to the scientific community through international collaborations, invited lectures, mentoring, and peer review for journals in developmental and cell biology. She is committed to interdisciplinary research and the training of young scientists in quantitative and mechanistic approaches to developmental biology.

Anna-Katerina (Kat) Hadjantonakis is a Member and Chair of the Developmental Biology Program, Sloan Kettering Institute, New York. Her lab investigates the signals, forces and resulting morphogenetic ell behaviors cells use to build tissues in mouse embryos, and mouse and human stem cell and organoid models. Their primary focus is on the development of the endoderm in the early mammalian embryo, and how this tissue gives rise to the respiratory and digestive tract organs. Their work has shown that nascent definitive endoderm cells arising at gastrulation, undergo a cycle of an EMT followed by an MET. She received a BSc in Biochemistry, and PhD in Molecular Genetics, from Imperial College, London. Thereafter postdoctoral training, first with Andras Nagy at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Toronto, and thereafter with Virginia Papaioannou at Columbia University, New York. She established her independent research group at Sloan Kettering in 2004. She has published 230 peer-reviewed publications and serves on the editorial boards of journals including Development, Developmental Cell, Journal of Cell Biology, and Stem Cell Reports.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8OIXJ5gAAAAJ&hl=en

https://www.mskcc.org/research/ski/labs/anna-katerina-hadjantonakis