Assistant Professor of Pathology
Harvard Medical School
NRB-930G
77 Avenue Louis Pasteur
Boston, MA 02115
PH: 617-432-6582
FX: 617-432-6580
GuoFu_Hu@hms.harvard.edu

Research Interests

We are focusing on the mechanistic study of angiogenin, an angiogenic ribonuclease whose expression is upregulated in a variety of cancer cells and is thought to play a role in tumor angiogenesis. Among its many properties, one that we recently discovered appears to have paramount significance. We have found that angiogenin is endocytosed both by activated normal endothelial cells and by various cancer cells, and is translocated to the nucleus where it seems to play a role in rRNA transcription. Nuclear translocation of angiogenin is specific to endothelial cells and cancer cells. It does not occur in normal fibroblasts and epithelial cells. We have shown that rRNA transcription in endothelial cells increases in response to exogenous angiogenin, and decreases when endogenous angiogenin expression is inhibited. We have also shown that endogenous angiogenin is necessary for endothelial cell proliferation stimulated by other angiogenic factors including FGF and VEGF. Moreover, down-regulating angiogenin expression in cancer cells inhibits rRNA transcription, ribosome biogenesis, in vitro and in vivo cell proliferation, and tumor angiogenesis. Currently, two major areas of research are undergoing. 1) Nuclear translocation pathway of angiogenin; and 2) the mechanism by which angiogenin stimulates rRNA transcription.

Publications

 1. Xu Z-P, Tsuji T, Riordan JF, Hu G-F. Identification and Characterization of an angiogenin-binding DNA sequence that stimulates luciferase reporter gene expression. Biochemistry 42, 121-128, 2003.

 2. Kishimoto K, Liu S, Tsuji T, Olson KA, Hu G-F. Endogenous angiogenin in endothelial cells is a general requirement for cell proliferation and angiogenesis. Oncogene, 24, 445-456, 2005.

 3. Tsuji T, Sun Y, Koji K, Olson KA, Liu S, Hirukawa S, Hu G-F. Angiogenin is translocated to the nucleus of HeLa cells and is involved in rRNA transcription and cell proliferation. Cancer Res. 65 (4), 1352-1360, 2005.