What’s been a moment in your journey that made you feel especially excited or proud of the work you’re doing?

It was the first time we discovered that genetically knocking out a mechanosensitive ion channel, one conventionally studied in human sensory biology in the context of touch and pain, dramatically inhibited glioma growth in both flies and mice. That moment became the foundation of everything that followed: our sustained investigation into how physics governs brain tumors. It crystallized the central insight of our research program – brain tumors are not merely genetic aberrations; they are living mechanical objects embedded in a physical environment, and they exploit physics the way they exploit chemistry. Since that initial discovery, our work has revealed that the brain tumor is an organism that builds its own biophysical life support system. It generates mechanical forces to feed its own sensors. It constructs physical barriers to exclude chemotherapy. It hijacks electrical activity from surrounding neurons. It reads fluid dynamics to fuel metastasis. These behaviors are mediated by ion channels expressed by tumor cells, which are targetable vulnerabilities. Physics doesn’t mutate. The initial discovery, which excites me to this day, opened a door for us to investigate and target cancer biophysics in brain tumors.

What inspires you most about your work right now?

Our work studying how ions are regulated inside the cell nucleus is what inspires me most right now. Regulating ionic concentrations in the cell is fundamentally important for cell physiology, tissue homeostasis, and organism fitness. Ion channels comprise the third largest class of drug targets (after G protein-coupled receptors and kinases). To date, most of the research is about ion channels on the plasma membrane. In a project spanning more than seven years, we identified a potassium channel that localizes at the nuclear envelope of tumor cells in medulloblastoma, the most common malignant brain tumor in children. By dissecting how this potassium channel works, we unlocked a “black box”: how potassium levels in the nucleus are regulated and what significance that has in the cells. We found that nuclear potassium is a critical regulator of nuclear envelope integrity and genome stability, a function that appears to be universal across cell types and species. These findings may open a new field of investigation into ion regulation within the nucleus in health and diseases (including, but not limited to, brain cancer).

What’s something about your path or perspective that you think shapes how you approach your research today?

Curiosity is the fundamental cornerstone that guides me in research. Looking back on the 11 years since I started my lab (how time flies!), I realized that my trainees and I started every project with shared curiosity, rooted in the goal of understanding fundamental biology in brain development and tumorigenesis. Every project can be traced to one foundational experimental discovery, which ignited our interest and inspired follow-up experiments. Curiosity about how physics interact with genomic and biochemical mechanisms to govern brain tumorigenesis will always be the beacon that guides us forward. 

Outside of your work, what’s something you enjoy that might surprise people?

I watch silly videos on YouTube and Douyin. I find watching them particularly refreshing after working on a grant or manuscript for several hours. Curiosity and silliness are closer relatives than they might seem.