Lo Receives UT System STARs Award

Hui-Wen Lo, PhD, professor, vice chair of research, UTHealth Houston Distinguished Professor in Neuro-Oncology, and founding director of the Metastatic Brain Tumor Research Program in the Vivian L. Smith Department of Neurosurgery at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, received a $750,000 Faculty STARs Award to support equipment purchases and laboratory renovation for a new program that addresses the biology of metastatic brain tumors to identify effective therapies for hard-to-treat brain metastases. The University of Texas System STARs (Science and Technology Acquisition and Retention) program provides funding to encourage faculty members to perform their research at a UT institution.

Lo’s current research is focused on elucidating the biology underlying cancer genesis and progression and using translation of bench knowledge to enable the development of novel tumor biomarkers and more effective therapies for intractable cancers. She investigates particular cancer types – metastatic breast cancer, breast cancer brain metastasis, and glioblastoma – to improve researchers’ limited understanding of these conditions and identify effective treatments for patients with these diseases.

Her laboratory has been continuously supported by the National Institutes of Health, United States Department of Defense, and other private agencies and foundations since 2006, for a total of more than $10 million in grant funding. During her eight-year tenure at Wake Forest School of Medicine, she successfully competed for five federal grants with more than $6 million of funding. She is currently the principal investigator of one National Cancer Institute R01 and three Department of Defense Breast Cancer Breakthrough Awards.

Lo, who is affiliated with The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, received her doctor of philosophy in biochemistry and molecular biology at UTHealth Houston in 2002. Her PhD dissertation project was focused on understanding the signaling pathways that regulate the human glutathione S-transferase P1 gene at the transcriptional and post-translational levels in glioblastoma. Lo also holds a Master of Arts in Nutritional Sciences from The University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences from UTHealth Houston.