Biochemical Journal Poster Prize winner

Chang Xiao

Chang Xiao earned her M.D. and M.S. degrees in China and practiced as a pathologist there. The experience of meeting a variety of cancer patients triggered her interest in research, in particular understanding the pathogenesis of cancer. She is a Ph.D. student in Systems Biology & Physiology Program in University of Cincinnati, College of Medicine under the mentorship of Dr Yana Zavros. The focus of her research is to identify the role of Sonic Hedgehog (Shh) in maintaining the homoeostasis of the adult gastric epithelium in the absence of Helicobacter pylori-induced inflammation. She is currently using a mouse model expressing a tamoxifen-inducible deletion of Shh within the stomach. The advantage of this model is that it allows the establishment of fully differentiated adult gastric epithelium before the ablation of Shh. Furthermore, in this model, deleted Shh is re-expressed in new parietal cells that are differentiated from the gastric progenitor cells over time, thus recapitulating the clinical process of H. pylori infection and allowing us to study the significance of Shh signalling in the adult stomach via a loss-of- and gain-of-function analysis within the same mouse model.