Iris Luk

Background

About Iris Luk

My career goal is to advance the discovery and development of effective cancer therapeutics that improve patient survival and quality of lives. Expertise: unravel disease molecular mechanisms, preclinical animal and organoids models, synthetic lethality and CRISPR screen, personalized medicine, preclinical drug validation, epigenetics and molecular biology skills.I have extensive experience in liver and bile duct cancers biology and translational research. My postdoctoral work at Fred Hutch focuses on studying the molecular pathogenesis of IDH-mutant biliary cancer. One major focus is to dissect the mechanism of how IDH-mutant biliary cancer is hypersensitive to SRC kinase inhibitor dasatinib. I am also studying how IDH inhibitor works in suppressing biliary cancer progression.Previously, I obtained my PhD in prostate cancer in the Interdisciplinary Oncology Program in UBC. My PhD studies encompass novel target discovery, targeting agent development and preclinical drug efficacy testing. My work has discovered that an Inhibitor of Apoptosis (IAP) protein, BIRC6, is important in the survival of advanced prostate cancer cells and I have successfully designed antisense oligonucleotide-based agents specifically target multiple IAP genes. I have reported the findings in three first authored papers (Clinical Cancer Research, Oncotarget and PLoS one). I am also a co-inventor in patent applications (USA & Canada) regarding to the use of IAP-targeting antisense in the treatment of advanced cancers.