Post-doctoral Research Associate, University of Manchester, UK- WP1/Task 1.3: The importance of the circadian clock in maintaining tendon and cartilage fitness
- Secondment to HKU: October-November 2019
Joan Chang received her PhD degree in October 2013, and worked at Biotech Research and Innovation Center, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, for just over a year to complete her studies on novel LOXL2 small molecule inhibitors in breast cancer progression and metastasis. She also spent two months at Karolinska Insitutet, Stockholm, Sweden, studying the role of phosphatases in LOXL2-signalling in fibroblasts, under the supervision of Prof Arne Östman. Joan then moved to UNC Chapel Hill, USA, working with Dr Andrew Dudley to study the effects of HMGB1 on breast cancer and melanoma, and created a lineage-tracing mouse model to study the role of adipocytes during tumour progression.
Joan is currently working with Prof Karl Kadler at the Wellcome Centre for Cell-Matrix Research at University of Manchester, UK, on the circadian control of matrix deposition. She is particularly interested in how the endosomal pathway is involved in fibroblast collagen matrix homeostasis, and how this may be disturbed in diseased matrix such as fibrosis and cancer.
The purpose of her secondment to HKU is to further understand how the cartilage matrix is controlled in a circadian manner, and to establish whether in vitro systems mimics the circadian biology of in vivo mouse models (results obtained by Michal Dudek during his RUBICON secondment to MCRI).
