Cancers of the esophagus and stomach (gastroesophageal cancers) are deadly diseases that develop through a stepwise metaplastic progression. There is a deficiency of knowledge regarding the pathogenesis of this metaplastic development and progression in the upper GI tract. These precancerous lesions oftentimes reflect an aberrant developmental process with loss of normal upper GI transcriptional programming and a switch to an intestinal differentiation process.
My lab strives to better understand why and how these precancerous conditions develop and to ultimately reverse these conditions to prevent them from ever progressing to cancers.
Gastroesophageal cancers are deadly diseases with a lack of safe and efficacious treatments.
These cancers display remarkable tumor heterogeneity with areas of well differentiation mixed with more poorly differentiated areas.
Gastroesophageal adenocarcinomas develop from precancerous metaplasias of the upper GI tract through a pathohistologic sequence.
The Jin lab strives to fully understand the molecular heterogeneity of gastroesophageal cancers and their metaplastic precursors