Mitchell Ho
Laboratory of Molecular Biology
The Center for Cancer Research
United States of America
Biography
Mitchell Ho is a Senior Investigator at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), NIH. Dr. Ho and his team are designing antibodies to inhibit signaling pathways responsible for the growth of cancer. He has two main research areas. One focuses on decreasing the size of the antibody to make a 'single domain antibody' so it can target a buried functional region in receptors or signaling complexes. The second area is to establish new therapeutic targets with a focus on tumor-specific glypicans and make antibodies that modulate their activity. His group was the first to discover inhibitory antibodies with the unique ability to block Wnt/Yap signaling pathway via binding cryptic functional regions on glypican-3 in liver cancer. Dr. Ho received a Ph.D. with Mariangela Segre from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he won a NIDA/NRSA fellowship to design anti-idiotypic antibodies as cocaine antagonists. He was a postdoctoral fellow with Ira Pastan (NCI) to engineer immunotoxins against cancer. He was recruited to NCI as a tenure track Investigator in 2008 and was promoted as a tenured Senior Investigator in 2015. Dr. Ho is a recipient of the NCI Director's Intramural Innovation Award, the Meso Foundation Award, the OCRFA Individual Investigator Award and the NIH Merit Award. Dr. Ho serves on the Board of Distinguished Advisors for the Antibody Society. He is also the Chair of the Department of Biochemistry for the FAES Graduate School at the NIH.
Research Interest
Cancer Biology, Cell Biology, Immunology, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
Publications
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Tang Z, Feng M, Gao W, Phung Y, Chen W, et al. (2013) A human single-domain antibody elicits potent antitumor activity by targeting an epitope in mesothelin close to the cancer cell surface. Mol Cancer Ther. 12: 416-426.
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Feng M, Gao W, Wang R, Chen W, Man YG, et al. (2013) Therapeutically targeting glypican-3 via a conformation-specific single-domain antibody in hepatocellular carcinoma. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 110: E1083-1091.
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Gao W, Kim H, Feng M, Phung Y, Xavier CP, et al. (2014) Inactivation of Wnt signaling by a human antibody that recognizes the heparan sulfate chains of glypican-3 for liver cancer therap. Hepatology 60: 576-87.
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Gao W, Tang Z, Zhang YF, Feng M, Qian M, et al. (2015) Immunotoxin targeting glypican-3 regresses liver cancer via dual inhibition of Wnt signalling and protein synthesis. Nat. Commun 6: 6536.
