Frustration can serve as a tremendous motivator.

University of Toledo associate professor and researcher Dr. Fan Dong specialized in  hematology (study of the blood) at a hospital in his home country of China for several years. Most of the patients he treated who were diagnosed with leukemia died — and there was little he could do to help them.

“It was a very, very frustrating experience,” Dong said.

Dr. Fan Dong

It was during his graduate work in the Netherlands where Dong discovered that a gene, which encodes a cell surface receptor called the G-CSF receptor, was somehow mutated in the cells that became leukemia cancer cells. The G-CSF receptor plays an important role in the normal development of a type of white blood cells known as granulocytes.

The G-CSF receptor protein is present on the surface of granulocytes. Once its function is activated, it determines how the cell should behave and develop in the bone marrow.

Dong’s graduate work laid the foundation for a four-year, $840,000 American Cancer Society (ACS) grant to study a protein called Gfi-1. That protein is known as a transcription factor or gene regulator, and it controls gene expression.

Mutations or changes in the G–CSF receptor genes are associated with a subgroup of leukemia patients — those who are deficient in granulocytes in early life, a condition called severe congenital neutropenia. In about 90 percent of those leukemia patients, the G-CSF receptor protein is shortened or truncated. Interestingly, Dong said the level of Gfi-1 protein in granulocytes is up-regulated by the normal G-CSF receptor protein, but not by the truncated receptor proteins.

By studying the Gfi-1 protein, Dong hopes to have an answer, or at least a clearer understanding of how leukemia occurs.

“We hope to be able to identify proteins that we can target for leukemia treatment,” Dong said.

Dong teaches in UT’s biological sciences department, and has taught and conducted research at UT since summer 2002. His ACS research grant began in January and runs through the end of 2012.

Dong’s grant is just one of 35 Ohio cancer research projects that received more than $19 million in funding by ACS.

The  ACS grant allows Dong to hire assistants such as lab technicians, postdoctoral fellows, graduate and undergrad students as needed for his research.

Also, he’ll be seeking out other researchers involved in the same type of research and look to collaborate where they can. Already, Dong has plans to collaborate with a University of Cincinnati researcher who also is looking at the Gfi-1 protein.

Dong’s ACS proposal for the grant was based on an article on the Gfi-1 protein he published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in 2006. Earlier this year, he had another article on Gfi-1 (how it interacts with the Miz-1 protein) published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Dong will provide an annual update to the ACS and a report on his findings and recommendations at the end of the four years.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 22nd, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Community, Education.
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