International Journal of Applied Science - Research and Review Open Access

Dong-Xu Liu

Biography

In 1983 Dr Liu went to the China Agricultural University, one of the national top 10 key universities in China and graduated in 1987 with a BSc in plant genetics and breeding. After worked at the Mianyang Institute of Agricultural Sciences from 1987 to 1989, he studied at the Chinese Academy of Sciences: Chengdu Institute of Biology for three years and earned his MSc in genetics in 1992. He worked in the Medical Laboratory of Molecular Biology at then West China University of Medical Sciences, now part of the Sichuan University for two years, carrying out medical research on genetic diseases (beta-thalassemia) and multidrug resistance of tumours. From July 1994 to October 1995, he was a visiting scholar at the Royal Marsden Hospital: Institute of Cancer Research, London, United Kingdom, participating in a programme to identify genes differentially expressed between the normal and malignant breast tissues. He successfully identified five novel PI 3-kinases which were not found by other competitors in the area at that time. He later studied at the University of Westminster with the support of an Overseas Research Student Award from the British Government. He was awarded a three year PhD scholarship by the National University of Singapore in 1997 to read for a PhD in medicine, which was conferred in 2001. Dr Liu held a post-doctoral fellowship position at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB), A*Star, Singapore for 4 years from 2000 to 2004 before he took a more senior position at the Liggins Institute, University of Auckland, where he spent more than 12 years doing breast cancer research. In August 2016 he joined in the Auckland University of Technology as an Associate Professor.

Research Interest

My research interests include breast cancer biology, growth hormone signalling, oncogenes and molecular therapeutics. My current focus is on the identification of diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for breast cancer, and the development of therapeutic agents that target specific growth factors or molecules involved in cancer progression. In the past 12 years, I have taken part in quite a number of commercial projects involving the development of therapeutic targets for cancers. I am an inventor in 14 international patents for potential therapeutic targets for cancers. Recent screening programme for hormones or secreted proteins that initiate or progress cancer has generated intellectual property of potential enormous utility and value for cancer therapeutics. My work of search for novel therapeutic targets for breast cancer has attracted much attention in the area of anticancer drug development.