Liankun Song

Biography

Liankun Song, Ph.D., is an Assistant Project Scientist in the Department of Urology at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on molecular drivers in prostate cancer initiation and progression, with emphasis on the oncogenic function of SKP2 in prostate carcinogenesis and the development of SKP2 targeted therapeutic approaches. She also works on strategies to overcome chemotherapy resistance, including targeting copper metabolism to enhance docetaxel efficacy. Her work further addresses cancer stem cells and tumor-initiating properties, as well as ethnicity associated differences in the tumor microenvironment. Song has developed specialized expertise in patient derived organoids, patient derived xenograft models and genetically engineered mouse models. She also applies single cell and spatial transcriptomic approaches to study the tumor microenvironment.

Song received her Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the Institute of Materia Medica at Peking Union Medical College, Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, where her doctoral research examined SIRT2 regulation of autophagy and mechanisms of α-synuclein in neurodegenerative disease models. Following her doctoral training, she completed postdoctoral work at Western University of Health Sciences, studying endoplasmic reticulum associated degradation of misfolded proinsulin, before joining the University of California, Irvine in 2017.

Song has authored over 20 peer reviewed publications on prostate cancer, bladder cancer and neurodegenerative disease. Using prostate-specific, SKP2 humanized mice generated by CRISPR knock-in, she characterized the role of SKP2 in prostate neoplastic initiation and microenvironmental reprogramming. She also identified the copper transporter ATP7B as a novel target for improving the efficacy of docetaxel with disulfiram/copper, and showed that flavokawain A reduces the tumor-initiating properties and stemness of prostate cancer. In addition, she has contributed to chemoprevention studies of dietary natural products in prostate and bladder cancer, and to a phase I trial of docetaxel plus lycopene in metastatic prostate cancer. She has presented her research at multiple American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meetings and Society for Basic Urologic Research conferences.

Education

• Ph.D. in Pharmacology, Peking Union Medical College, Tsinghua University, 2015
• Bachelor of Science in Biology, Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University, 2010

Distinctions

• The First-Class Scholarship of Peking Union Medical College, 2012-2013
• The Third-Class Scholarship of Peking Union Medical College, 2011-2012
• The Scholarship of Northwest A & F University, 2006-2010