This interview is with Biomarkers in Cancer editorial board member Dr Feng Jiang. Biomarkers in Cancer is a new open access journal recently launched by Libertas Academica. Editor in Chief Dr Barbara Guinn has recently issued a call for papers.

What is the primary focus of your research?

Identifying genes that contribute to cancer development and progression, and translating the resultant information and technologies into clinic for diagnosis and therapeutic interventions of tumors, particularly, lung cancer, which is the most lethal of all cancers.

What are the most exciting developments arising from current research in your area?

I have developed genomic biomarkers that can be detected in sputum for the early detection of lung cancer (Clin Cancer Res. 2007, Cancer 2008). The research was recently reported in AACR Breaking News and NBC News.

What articles and/or books have you published recently?

• Katz RL, Zaidi TM, Fernandez RL, Zhang J, He W, Acosta C, Daniely M, Madi L, Vargas MA, Dong Q, Jiang XG (Jiang F), Caraway NP, Vaporciyan AA, Roth JA, Spitz MR. Automated detection of genetic abnormalities combined with cytology in sputum is a sensitive predictor of lung cancer. Mod. Pathol. 2008.

• Qiu Q, Todd NW, Li R, Peng H, Liu Z, Yfantis HG, Katz RL, Stass SA, Jiang, F. Magnetic enrichment of bronchial epithelial cells from sputum for lung cancer diagnosis. Cancer. 2008. 6: 22-29.

• Yendamuri S, Vaporciyan AA, Hofstetter W, Jiang F, Spitz MR, Swisher SG, Roth JA, and Katz RL. 3p22.1 and 10q22.3 Deletions Detected by Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (FISH) A Potential New Tool for Early Detection of Non-small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC). J. Thorac. Oncol., 28. 2008.

• Liu Z, Gartenhaus R, Tan M, Jiang F, Jiao X. Gene and Pathway Identification with Lp Penalized. Bayesian Logistic Regression. BMC Bioinformatics, 2008. 9:412.

• Liu Z, Jiang, F. Gene Identification and survival prediction with supervised and unsupervised learning. Int. J. Data Mining and Bioinformatics, in press, 2009, Feb.

• Qiu, Q., Todd, N.W., Liu Z, Stass, S.A., Jiang, F. ALDH1 Is a stem cell marker in lung cancer and predictor of poor clinical outcome. Mol. Cancer Res., 2009, March.

• Zhao F, Zhao M, Auerbach A, D'Costa A, Rapoport A, Burger A, Sausville B, Stass S ,Jiang F, Sands A, Aguilera N Phospho-p70S6K/p85S6K and cdc2/cdk1 are novel targets for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma combination therapy. Clin. Cancer Res., 2009, March.

• Qiu, Q., Todd, N.W., Liu Z, Katz RL, Stass, S.A., Jiang, F. Combined Genetic Analysis of Sputum and Computed Tomography for Noninvasive Diagnosis of Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer. Lung Cancer, 2009, January.

• Xie Y., Todd, N.W., Liu Z, Katz RL, Stass, S.A., Jiang, F. Analysis of altered miRNA expression in sputum for diagnosis of non-small cell lung cancer. Lung Cancer, 2009. May 13.

• Katz RL, Vargas MA, Jiang F, Caraway NP, Roth JA, Spitz MR, El-Zein R. Levels of genetically abnormal circulating cells in patients with lung cancer correlate with stage and genetic phenotype of tumor, recurrence and survival. Journal of Oncology. In press. 2009.

• Liu Z, Tan M, and Jiang F. Regularized F-Measure Maximization for Feature Selection and Classification. Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology. 2009:61; 7946.

Further information about Dr Jiang:

• Dr Jiang's faculty profile webpage

share on