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Stephen Chan, MD, PhD

    Education & Training

  • Graduate School – University of California, San Francisco – PhD
  • Medical School – University of California, San Francisco – MD
  • Internship – Brigham and Women’s Hospital – Internal Medicine
  • Residency – Brigham and Women’s Hospital – Internal Medicine
  • Fellowship – Massachusetts General Hospital - Cardiology
Research Grants

NIH Grants:  R01, K08, R43, UH2

Research Summary

We are a basic science and translational research group studying the molecular mechanisms of pulmonary vascular disease and pulmonary hypertension (PH) – an example of an enigmatic disease where reductionistic studies have primarily focused on end-stage molecular effectors. To capitalize on the emerging discipline of “network medicine,” our research utilizes a combination of network-based bioinformatics with unique experimental reagents derived from genetically altered rodent and human subjects to accelerate systems-wide discovery in PH. Our published findings were among the first to identify the systems-level functions of microRNAs (miRNAs), which are small, non-coding RNAs that negatively regulate gene expression, as a root cause of PH. Our lab developed novel in silico approaches to analyze gene network architecture coupled with in vivo experimentation. The results now offer methods to identify persons at-risk for PH and develop therapeutic RNA targets. This work is the cornerstone of our evolving applications of network theory to the discovery of RNA-based origins of human diseases.

Representative Publications
  1. Bertero T, Oldham WM, Grasset EM, Bourget I, Boulter E, Pisano S, Hofman P, Bellvert F, Meneguzzi G, Bulavin DV, Estrach S, Feral CC, Chan SY, Bozec A, Gaggioli C. Tumor-stroma mechanics coordinate amino acid availability to sustain tumor growth and malignancy. Cell Metabolism. 2019; 29(1): 124-140. PMID: 30293773, PMCID: PMC6432652.
  2. Yu Q, Tai YY, Tang Y, Zhao J, Negi V, Culley MK, Pilli J, Sun W, Brugger K, Mayr J, Saggar R, Saggar R, Wallace WD, Ross DJ, Waxman AB, Wendell SG, Mullett SJ, Sembrat J, Rojas M, Khan OF, Dahlman J, Sugahara M, Kagiyama N, Satoh T, Zhang M, Feng N, Gorcsan J, Vargas SO, Haley KJ, Kumar R, Graham BB, Langer R, Anderson DG, Wang B, Shiva S, Bertero T, Chan SY (Senior Author). BOLA3 deficiency controls endothelial metabolism and glycine homeostasis in pulmonary hypertension. Circulation. 2019. 139:2238-2255. PMID: 30759996. PMCID: PMC6519484.
  3. Stearman RS, Bui QM, Speyer G, Handen A, Cornelius AR, Graham BB, Kim S, Mickler EA, Tuder RM, Chan SY, Geraci MW. Systems Analysis of the Human Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension Lung Transcriptome. American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology. 2018. 60(6): 637-649. PMCID: PMC6543748
  4. Culley MK, Chan SY. Mitochondrial metabolism in pulmonary hypertension: beyond mountains there are mountains. J Clin Invest. 2018 Aug 31;128(9):3704-3715. doi: 10.1172/JCI120847. PubMed PMID: 30080181; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6118596.
  5. Florentin J, Coppin E, Vasamsetti SB, Zhao J, Tai YY, Tang Y, Zhang Y, Watson A, Sembrat J, Rojas M, Vargas SO, Chan SY*, Dutta P* (Co-Corresponding Authors). Inflammatory Macrophage Expansion in Pulmonary Hypertension Depends upon Mobilization of Blood-Borne Monocytes. J Immunol. 2018 May 15;200(10):3612-3625. PMCID: PMC5940510.

NCBI bibliography