Education

2012–2017 Zhejiang University, China, Ph.D.
2009–2012 Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, M.S.
2005–2009 Qingdao Agricultural University, China, B.S.

Work experience

2022-present Principal Investigator at Institutes of Biomedical Sciences, Fudan University, China
2022-present Principal Investigator at Zhongshan-Xuhui Hospital, Fudan University, China
2018-2022 Postdoctoral Scholar Employee at University of California, San Diego, USA

Contact

Institutes of Biomedical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032

Lab homepage: https://www.x-mol.com/groups/su_hua?lang=en

Email: suhua@fudan.edu.cn

Biography

Dr. Hua Su conducted his Ph.D. training at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Zhejiang University. The results of his Ph.D. work are described in two outstanding research papers in Molecular Cell, one of the top cell biology and biochemistry journals. In one paper, on which he is the first author, Hua showed that VPS34 lysine acetylation by the acetyltransferase p300 controls VPS34 lipid kinase activity, thereby affecting the initiation of autophagy. The other paper to which he made a major contribution represents a very important and innovative study showing that the energy sensor AMPK activates autophagy through the phosphorylation of GAPDH. During his postdoctoral training in Dr. Michael Karin's laboratory at University of California, San Diego, Dr. Su was able to fully explain how autophagy-deficient tumor survival and in doing so, had discovered inhibition of either the initiation or the termination phases of autophagy results in activation of a different cancer cell survival and nutrient procurement pathway, macropinocytosis (MP). Importantly, he identified the mechanism through which autophagy-inhibited cancer cells turn on MP and shown it to depend on NRF2-mediated transcriptional activation. Moreover, he had shown that the combined inhibition of autophagy and MP results in the almost complete regression of mouse and human pancreatic cancers. These results have been published in the prestigious journal Cancer Cell. Dr. Su also studied how cancer cell metabolism is affected by the extracellular matrix (ECM). He started by testing whether collagen 1 (Col I), the major ECM component, is a substrate for MP, but soon made the truly amazing discovery that the ration of intact Col I fibers to Col I fragments generated by matrix metalloproteases is a key regulator of cancer cell metabolism. This applies not only to MP but also to mitochondrial biogenesis and bioenergetics. Although the basic studies of Dr. Su were carried out in mice and a novel culture system in which PDAC cells are plated on ECM that contains either cleaved or uncleaved Col I, the relative amounts of cleaved vs. uncleaved Col I in the PDAC stroma has a huge impact on patient survival after surgical resection. Patients whose tumors were enriched in cleaved Col I and whose cancerous cells expressed high levels of DDR1 did poorly with most of them succumbing to PDAC within 2 years after resection. This work is of importance because it provides a simple way for patient stratification and suggests that patients with high levels of cleaved Col I and DDR1 expression need more aggressive post-surgery treatments. These results have been published in the top journal Nature. In 2022, Dr. Su took the faculty position at Fudan University in Shanghai and established a research laboratory focus on tumor microenvironment and tumor metabolism.

Dr. Su is currently the Guest Associate Editor for Frontiers in Veterinary Infectious Diseases journal, member of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR),member of American pancreatic Association (APA) and member of American Chinese Society for Biological Sciences (SCBA). During his career, he has received many awards, including National Scholarship (2007, 2015, 2016); Roche Education Award for Excellence in Research (2017).Shanghai Leading Talent Project, 2022; National Natural Science Foundation--Outstanding Youth Project, 2022.

Research Areas

Tumor microenviroment and metabolism

Research interest

Mechanism of macropinocytosis initiation and its role in tumor development
Functions of collagen in tumor development and tumor immunity
Tumorigenesis and tumor metabolism of desmoplastic cancer (PDAC, iCCA)

Selected Publications

1. Hua Su, Fei Yang, Rao Fu, Brittney Trinh, Nina Sun, Junlai Liu, Avi Kumar, Jacopo Baglieri, Na Sinchai, Jeremy Siruno, Stephen Dozier, Ajay Nair, Aveline Filliol, Sara Brin Rosenthal, Jennifer Santini, Christian M. Metallo, Anthony Molina, Robert F. Schwabe, Andrew M. Lowy, David Brenner, Beicheng Sun*, and Michael Karin*, Collagenolysis-dependent DDR1 signaling dictates pancreatic cancer outcome. Nature, 2022, 610 (7931):366-372.

2. Hua Su, Fei Yang, Rao Fu, Xin Li, Randall French, Evangeline Mose, Xiaohong Pu, Brittney Trinh, Avi Kumar, Junlai Liu, Laura Antonucci, Jelena Todoric, Yuan Liu, Yinling Hu, Maria T. Diaz-Meco, Jorge Moscat, Christian M. Metallo, Andrew M. Lowy, Beicheng Sun*, and Michael Karin*, Cancer cells escape autophagy inhibition via NRF2-induced macropinocytosis. Cancer Cell, 2021, 39(5):678-693. (Preview by Cancer Cell, Highlight by Cancer Discovery).

3. Hua Su, Fei Yang, Beicheng Sun, Michael Karin*, Macropinocytosis: the big drinker behind cancer cell self-consumption. Autophagy, 2021 May;17(5):1290-1291.

4. Hua Su, Fei Yang, Qiuting Wang, Qiuhong Shen, Jingtao Huang, Chao Peng, Yi Zhang, Wei Wan, Qiming Sun, Catherine C.L. Wong, Tianhua Zhou, and Wei Liu*, Acetylation of VPS34 Controls the Initiation of Canonical and Non-canonical Autophagy. Molecular Cell, 2017, 67(6):907-921.（Highlight by Nature Cell Biology）.

5. Hua Su, and Wei Liu*, PIK3C3/VPS34 Control by Acetylation. Autophagy, 2018, 14(6):1086-1087.

6. Aveline Filliol, Yoshinobu Saito, Ajay Nair, Dianne H Dapito, Le-Xing Yu, Aashreya Ravichandra, Sonakshi Bhattacharjee, Silvia Affo, Naoto Fujiwara, Hua Su, Qiuyan Sun, Thomas M Savage, John R Wilson-Kanamori, Jorge M Caviglia, LiKang Chin, Dongning Chen, Xiaobo Wang, Stefano Caruso, Jin Ku Kang, Amit Dipak Amin, Sebastian Wallace, Ross Dobie, Deqi Yin, Oscar M Rodriguez-Fiallos, Chuan Yin, Adam Mehal, Benjamin Izar, Richard A Friedman, Rebecca G Wells, Utpal B Pajvani, Yujin Hoshida, Helen E Remotti, Nicholas Arpaia, Jessica Zucman-Rossi, Michael Karin, Neil C Henderson, Ira Tabas, Robert F Schwabe, Opposing roles of hepatic stellate cell subpopulations in hepatocarcinogenesis. Nature, 2022, 610(7931):356-365.

7. Yi Duan, Huikuan Chu, Katharina Brandl, Lu Jiang, Suling Zeng, Nairika Meshgin, Eleni Papachristoforou, Josepmaria Argemi, Beatriz G Mendes, Yanhan Wang, Hua Su, Weizhong Sun, Cristina Llorente, Tim Hendrikx, Xiao Liu, Mojgan Hosseini, Tatiana Kisseleva, David A Brenner, Ramon Bataller, Prakash Ramachandran, Michael Karin, Wenxian Fu, Bernd Schnabl, CRIg on liver macrophages clears pathobionts and protects against alcoholic liver disease. Nat Commun., 2021, 12(1):7172.

8. Jacopo Baglieri, Cuili Zhang, Shuang Liang, Xiao Liu, Takahiro Nishio, Sara B. Rosenthal, Debanjan Dhar, Hua Su, Min Cong, Jidong Jia, Mojgan Hosseini, Michael Karin, Tatiana Kisseleva, David Brenner, Non-degradable collagen increases liver fibrosis but not hepatocellular carcinoma in mice. Am J Pathol, 2021, 191(9):1564-1579.

9. Yixuan Zhou, Ingmar Niels Bastian, Mark D. Long, Michelle Dow, Weihua Li, Tao Liu, Rachael Katie Ngu, Laura Antonucci, Jian Yu Huang, Qui T. Phung, Xi-he Zhao, Sourav Banerjee, Xue-Jia Lin, Hongxia Wang, Brian Dang, Sylvia Choi, Daniel Karin, Hua Su, Mark H. Ellisman, Christina Jamieson, Marcus Bosenberg, Zhang Cheng, Johannes Haybaeck, Lukas Kenner, Kathleen M. Fisch, Richard Bourgon, Genevive Hernandez, Jennie R. Lill, Song Liu, Hannah Carter, Ira Mellman, Michael Karin*, and Shabnam Shalapour*, Activation of NF-κB and p300/CBP potentiates cancer chemoimmunotherapy through induction of MHC-I antigen presentation. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 2021, 118 (8) e2025840118.

10. Qiuhong Shen, Yin Shi, Jiaqi Liu, Hua Su, Jingtao Huang, Yi Zhang, Chao Peng, Tianhua Zhou, Qiming Sun, Wei Wan and Wei Liu*, Acetylation of STX17 (syntaxin 17) controls autophagosome maturation. Autophagy, 2021, 17(5):1157-1169.

11. Xiawei Cheng, Xiuling Ma, Qi Zhu, Dandan Song, Xianming Ding, Lin Li, Xiao Jiang, Xinyi Wang, Rui Tian, Hua Su, Zhirong Shen, She Chen, Ting Liu, Weihua Gong, Wei Liu, and Qiming Sun*, Pacer Is a Mediator of mTORC1 and GSK3-TIP60 Signaling in Regulation of Autophagosome Maturation and Lipid Metabolism. Molecular Cell, 2019, 73(4): 788-802.

12. Wei Wan, Zhiyuan You, Yinfeng Xu, Li Zhou, Zhunlv Guan, Chao Peng, Catherine C.L. Wong, Hua Su, Tianhua Zhou, and Wei Liu*, mTORC1 Phosphorylates Acetyltransferase p300 to Regulate Autophagy and Lipogenesis. Molecular Cell, 2017, 68(2):323-335.

13. Chunmei Chang, Hua Su, Danhong Zhang, Yusha Wang, Qiuhong Shen, Bo Liu, Rui Huang, Tianhua Zhou, Chao Peng, Catherine C.L. Wong, Han-Ming Shen, Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, and Wei Liu*, AMPK-Dependent Phosphorylation of GAPDH Triggers Sirt1 Activation and Is Necessary for Autophagy upon Glucose Starvation. Molecular Cell, 2015 60(6): 930-940.

14. Wenfeng Feng, Chunmei Chang, Dongjiao Luo, Hua Su, Shanshan Yu, Wen Hua, Zhihua Chen, Hu Hu, and Wei Liu*, Dissection of Autophagy in Human Platelets, Autophagy, 2014, 10(4): 642-651.