Tim Hui-Ming Huang, PhD

Continuously supported by the NIH for the past 29 years, Dr. Huang has been conducting studies on cancer epigenetics and genetics for three decades, pioneering the development of high-throughput microarray and next-generation sequencing technologies for the integrative analysis of cancer epigenomes. Building on these studies, Dr. Huang and his team members have conducted methylome profiling of more than 700 primary tumors and cancer cell lines, generating catalogs of an extensive repertoire of network-associated loci that stratify the epigenotypes of endometrial, breast, ovarian, prostate, and liver cancers. As a result, aberrantly expressed loci associated with specific oncogenic signaling networks have been identified as prognostic and predictive biomarkers. Additionally, independent validation of candidate methylation biomarkers has been conducted in cell-free DNA isolated from blood and bodily fluids for non-invasive cancer detection. 

His research team has recently developed novel technologies to characterize single-cell genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic patterns of intra- and inter-tumor heterogeneity in cell subpopulations. Expanding into new mechanistic frontiers, Dr. Huang's group discovered that tumor hybrid cells play a pivotal role in cancer metastasis, as reported in Nature Communications (2023). This breakthrough has shifted part of his team's focus toward targeting these hybrid cells to block metastatic progression, a direction that bridges his expertise in epigenetics with translational cancer biology. 

Supported by three U54 center grants through the NCI's Cancer Systems Biology Consortium for the past 18 years, he led a team of ~20 experimental and computational scientists in studying the complex epigenetic and genetic mechanisms underlying cancer progression. Throughout these studies, he has authored and co-authored ~338 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters and has mentored 112 pre- and post-doctoral trainees and junior faculty.

Related Diseases: Breast, prostate, lung and endometrial cancers.

Techniques: Single-cell genomics and omics.