Clara Liu

Program: Computational and Systems Biology

Current advisor: Li Ding, PhD

Undergraduate university: Cornell University, 2019

Enrollment year: 2019

Research summary
Understand the metastatic niche of colorectal cancer at single cell resolution

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the most common gastrointestinal malignancy in the US. Roughly 50% of CRC patients develop metastasis, with liver and lung being the most common sites. Despite advances in our understanding of primary CRC, the mechanism and treatment response for metastatic CRC (mCRC) remain inconclusive. In this project, we are interested in characterizing mCRC dissemination and seeding with genomic, epigenomic and transcriptomic data at single-cell level. The dataset also allows us to study the immune and stroma component in each tumor microenvironment. We hypothesize that there exists a pre-metastatic niche, especially in the liver for CRC, that influences the organ tropism of CRC metastasis.

Graduate publications
Liu J, Cao S, Imbach KJ, Gritsenko MA, Lih TM, Kyle JE, Yaron-Barir TM, Binder ZA, Li Y, Strunilin I, Wang YT, Tsai CF, Ma W, Chen L, Clark NM, Shinkle A, Naser Al Deen N, Caravan W, Houston A, Simin FA, Wyczalkowski MA, Wang LB, Storrs E, Chen S, Illindala R, Li YD, Jayasinghe RG, Rykunov D, Cottingham SL, Chu RK, Weitz KK, Moore RJ, Sagendorf T, Petyuk VA, Nestor M, Bramer LM, Stratton KG, Schepmoes AA, Couvillion SP, Eder J, Kim YM, Gao Y, Fillmore TL, Zhao R, Monroe ME, Southard-Smith AN, Li YE, Jui-Hsien Lu R, Johnson JL, Wiznerowicz M, Hostetter G, Newton CJ, Ketchum KA, Thangudu RR, Barnholtz-Sloan JS, Wang P, Fenyö D, An E, Thiagarajan M, Robles AI, Mani DR, Smith RD, Porta-Pardo E, Cantley LC, Iavarone A, Chen F, Mesri M, Nasrallah MP, Zhang H, Resnick AC, Chheda MG, Rodland KD, Liu T, Ding L; Philadelphia Coalition for a Cure; Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium. 2024 Multi-scale signaling and tumor evolution in high-grade gliomas. Cancer Cell, 42(7):1217-1238.e19. PMCID:

Terekhanova NV, Karpova A, Liang WW, Strzalkowski A, Chen S, Li Y, Southard-Smith AN, Iglesia MD, Wendl MC, Jayasinghe RG, Liu J, Song Y, Cao S, Houston A, Liu X, Wyczalkowski MA, Lu RJ, Caravan W, Shinkle A, Naser Al Deen N, Herndon JM, Mudd J, Ma C, Sarkar H, Sato K, Ibrahim OM, Mo CK, Chasnoff SE, Porta-Pardo E, Held JM, Pachynski R, Schwarz JK, Gillanders WE, Kim AH, Vij R, DiPersio JF, Puram SV, Chheda MG, Fuh KC, DeNardo DG, Fields RC, Chen F, Raphael BJ, Ding L. 2023 Epigenetic regulation during cancer transitions across 11 tumour types. Nature, 623(7986):432-41. PMCID: PMC10632147

Cui Zhou D, Jayasinghe RG, Chen S, Herndon JM, Iglesia MD, Navale P, Wendl MC, Caravan W, Sato K, Storrs E, Mo CK, Liu J, Southard-Smith AN, Wu Y, Naser Al Deen N, Baer JM, Fulton RS, Wyczalkowski MA, Liu R, Fronick CC, Fulton LA, Shinkle A, Thammavong L, Zhu H, Sun H, Wang LB, Li Y, Zuo C, McMichael JF, Davies SR, Appelbaum EL, Robbins KJ, Chasnoff SE, Yang X, Reeb AN, Oh C, Serasanambati M, Lal P, Varghese R, Mashl JR, Ponce J, Terekhanova NV, Yao L, Wang F, Chen L, Schnaubelt M, Lu RJ, Schwarz JK, Puram SV, Kim AH, Song SK, Shoghi KI, Lau KS, Ju T, Chen K, Chatterjee D, Hawkins WG, Zhang H, Achilefu S, Chheda MG, Oh ST, Gillanders WE, Chen F, DeNardo DG, Fields RC, Ding L. 2022 Spatially restricted drivers and transitional cell populations cooperate with the microenvironment in untreated and chemo-resistant pancreatic cancer. Nat Genet, 54(9):1390-1405. PMCID: PMC9470535