Shu Lab website

Chih-Wen Shu

Professor & Director

Institute of BioPharmaceutical Sciences,

National Sun Yat-sen University

No. 70, Lianhai Rd., Gushan Dist.,

Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 804201

Email: cwshu@mail.nsysu.edu.tw

or vcwshu@gmail.com

Tel：07-5252-000 ext. 7202(Lab) or 7203 (office)

ORCID

Education

Ph.D., Department of Life Science, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. (2001-2007)
Visiting Researcher -Division of Biological Science, University of California, San Diego, USA. (2005-2006)
Visiting Researcher -Moores Cancer Center, University of California, San Diego, USA. (2006-2007)

Positions & Employments

Professor & Director, Institute of BioPharmaceutical Sciences, NSYSU, Taiwan (2022-present)
Associate professor, Institute of BioPharmaceutical Sciences, NSYSU, Taiwan (2020-2022)
Associate professor, I-Shou University, Taiwan (2018-2020)
Associate research fellow, Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital, Taiwan (2014-2018)
Senior assistant research fellow, Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital, Taiwan (2011-2014)
Research fellow, The SASS Foundation for Medical Research, NY, USA. (2009-2011)
Postdoctoral fellow, HTS Screening Center, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, CA, USA (2007-2011)

Honors & Awards

Excellent Research Award, National Sun Yat-sen University (2023 ~ present)
New Faculty Award, National Sun Yat-sen University (2020 ~ 2023)
Excellent tutor, College of Science, National Sun Yat-sen University (2022)
Teaching Excellence in English, National Sun Yat-sen University (2022)
The Best Poster Award, E-Da Health Care Group annual meeting (2018 and 2019)
Outstanding Paper Award, Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital (2014 and 2015)
Young Investigator, Yen Tjing Ling medical foundation (2014)
Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, The SASS Foundation for Medical Research, NY, USA. (2009-2011)

Research interest

My personal research interest is about the role of autophagy in diseases, such as cancer, neuron and ocular degeneration diseases, particularly in cancer. Our projects include I-a) evaluating the correlation of autophagy-related (ATG) proteins with clinical outcomes, I-b) functional genomics screening for new regulators of ATG4, and II) modulators development for ATG4.

Autophagy is a recycling pathway required for normal homeostasis. Dysfunction of autophagy results in different diseases. The role of autophagy in cancer remains unclear, particular in clinical setting. The correlation of these ATG proteins with clnical outcomes were examined with tissue microarray (TMA) in our Lab. We are further evaluating if autophagy modulation could be a potential treatment.

Moreover, we found that ATG4 is phosphorylated at pS383/392 to increase its proteolytic activity. we have kinome siRNA library in house, which allow us to screen potential regulators of ATG4.

As oncogenesis role of ATG4 in cancer, we have FDA approved drug/Chinese herb libraries and synthetic peptides/RNAi to develop potential modulators/inhibitors, hopefully get a starting point for targeted therapy.