Research:

The goal of my laboratory is to discover, develop and improve novel gene therapy for treating malignancy and other severe genetic diseases. To realize our goal, we are conducting studies in the following areas: 1) developing novel intramuscular electroporation-based therapies for treating residual systemic malignancy; 2) developing effective local tumor electroporation therapy for eradicating heavy-load tumors; 3) developing chemogene therapy for treating tumors; 4) developing tumor-anchoring or homing gene therapy for reducing toxicity; and 5) understanding the molecular mechanism of tumor growth inhibition mediated by electroporation gene therapy in combination with chemotherapy. These research projects are supported by NCI/NIH and NIDCR/NIH.

Recent Publications:

Li, S, M Wilkinson, X Xia, M David, L Xu, A Purkel-Sutton and A Bhardwaj (2005). Induction of IFN-regulated factors and antitumoral surveillance by transfected placebo plasmid DNA. Molecular Therapy. 11(1):112-119

Li, S et al. (2005) Administration route- and immune cell activation-dependent tumor eradication by IL-12 electrotransfer Molecular Therapy 12(5):942-949.

Torrero, M, W Henk and S Li (2006). Regression of highrade malignancy in mice by bleomycin and Interleukin-12. electrochemogenetherapy. Clinical Cancer Research 12(1):257-263

Torrero M, Xia X, Henk W, Yu S and S Li (2006) Stat1 deficiency in the host enhances IL-12-mediated inhibition of tumor growth Cancer Research 66(8):4461-4467

Liu J, Xia X, Torrero M, Barrett R, Craig R, Shillitoe EJ and S Li (2006) The Mechanism of Exogenous B7.1-Enhanced IL-12-Mediated Complete Regression of Tumors by a Single Electroporation Delivery. International Journal of Cancer (in press)