Skip to main content
Advertisement

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Accepted manuscripts
    • Issue in progress
    • Latest complete issue
    • Issue archive
    • Archive by article type
    • Subject collections
    • Interviews
    • Sign up for alerts
  • About us
    • About DMM
    • Editors and Board
    • Editor biographies
    • Travelling Fellowships
    • Grants and funding
    • Journal Meetings
    • Workshops
    • The Company of Biologists
    • Journal news
  • For authors
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Aims and scope
    • Presubmission enquiries
    • Article types
    • Manuscript preparation
    • Cover suggestions
    • Editorial process
    • Promoting your paper
    • Open Access
    • Outstanding paper prize
    • Biology Open transfer
  • Journal info
    • Journal policies
    • Rights and permissions
    • Media policies
    • Reviewer guide
    • Sign up for alerts
  • Contact
    • Contact DMM
    • Advertising
    • Feedback
  • COB
    • About The Company of Biologists
    • Development
    • Journal of Cell Science
    • Journal of Experimental Biology
    • Disease Models & Mechanisms
    • Biology Open

User menu

  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
Disease Models & Mechanisms
  • COB
    • About The Company of Biologists
    • Development
    • Journal of Cell Science
    • Journal of Experimental Biology
    • Disease Models & Mechanisms
    • Biology Open

supporting biologistsinspiring biology

Disease Models & Mechanisms

Advanced search

RSS   Twitter   Facebook   YouTube

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Accepted manuscripts
    • Issue in progress
    • Latest complete issue
    • Issue archive
    • Archive by article type
    • Subject collections
    • Interviews
    • Sign up for alerts
  • About us
    • About DMM
    • Editors and Board
    • Editor biographies
    • Travelling Fellowships
    • Grants and funding
    • Journal Meetings
    • Workshops
    • The Company of Biologists
    • Journal news
  • For authors
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Aims and scope
    • Presubmission enquiries
    • Article types
    • Manuscript preparation
    • Cover suggestions
    • Editorial process
    • Promoting your paper
    • Open Access
    • Outstanding paper prize
    • Biology Open transfer
  • Journal info
    • Journal policies
    • Rights and permissions
    • Media policies
    • Reviewer guide
    • Sign up for alerts
  • Contact
    • Contact DMM
    • Advertising
    • Feedback
FIRST PERSON
First person – Ling-shiang Chuang
Disease Models & Mechanisms 2019 12: dmm041624 doi: 10.1242/dmm.041624 Published 13 August 2019
  • Article
  • Figures & tables
  • Info & metrics
  • PDF
Loading

ABSTRACT

First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Disease Models & Mechanisms (DMM), helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Ling-shiang (Felix) Chuang is first author on ‘Zebrafish modeling of intestinal injury, bacterial exposures and medications defines epithelial in vivo responses relevant to human inflammatory bowel disease’, published in DMM. Ling-shiang is an instructor in the lab of Judy Cho at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA, investigating how to establish human genetic-driven personalized drug treatments for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) by using zebrafish as a screening model.

Embedded Image

Ling-shiang (Felix) Chuang

How would you explain the main findings of your paper to non-scientific family and friends?

IBD is composed of two subtypes, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, which are estimated to affect more than 3-million adults in the United States. IBD is a complex disease, defined by interactions of human genetics, host epithelial and immune response, the microbiome and environmental factors. In recent years, progress has been made in associating IBD phenotypes to genetics and genomic information of patients. Mutations in genes for bacterial sensing, bacterial cleaning and immune cell activation increase the risk of IBD. The common IBD therapeutic agents are still costly, and result in moderate to low responses. We realized that novel methods are required and turned to developing an IBD animal model to better understand the effectiveness of IBD therapeutic agents in patients with different genetics, host response and microbiome. In this paper, we built these zebrafish intestinal injury models to mimic and measure the effects of acute inflammation and chronicity, bacterial exposure and drug response. In the era of precision medicine, our models scale more rapidly for a sophisticated understanding of time course factors, disparate cellular effects and mechanisms of action for established and new drugs.

“These intestinal injury models will pave the way for human genetic-driven personalized medicine approaches for IBD patients.”

What are the potential implications of these results for your field of research?

Our zebrafish intestinal injury models provide a unique opportunity to advance the field's understanding of the interactions between genetics, host response, the microbiome and therapeutic agents. These interactions can be further dissected by time course factors, disparate cellular effects and mechanisms of action of therapeutic agents. These intestinal injury models will pave the way for human genetic-driven personalized medicine approaches for IBD patients.

What are the main advantages and drawbacks of the model system you have used as it relates to the disease you are investigating?

The large sample sizes feasible with zebrafish-based studies allow us to conduct careful, time-course analyses relative to injury. The superior speed, sample size, visualization (e.g. microbes, autophagy) and the key role of the epithelial barrier makes high-throughput studies in zebrafish an important component of the IBD therapeutic development pipeline. The only drawback is that all the discoveries in the zebrafish model still require validation in human cells or mice.

“The therapeutic agents of human IBD are effective in our zebrafish model.”

What has surprised you the most while conducting your research?

The therapeutic agents of human IBD are effective in our zebrafish model. These reagents can either work by reducing the severity of the injury, or promote mucosal healing. These data give us hope that the mechanisms of action of the new therapeutic agents observed with screening in our models can be applied back directly to human IBD patients in the future.

Figure1
  • Download figure
  • Open in new tab
  • Download powerpoint

3D reconstruction of zebrafish posterior mid-intestine with endocytosed E. coli proteins and autophagy. Endocytosed E. coli proteins were labeled with pHrodo (red). Autophagosomes were labeled with Cyto-ID (green).

Describe what you think is the most significant challenge impacting your research at this time and how will this be addressed over the next 10 years?

Genetically speaking, complex diseases like IBD are the result of polygenicity. The polygenic risk scores have been used in estimating the disease risk for individuals based on their risk variants profile. However, the concept of combining polygenic risk is a big challenge for any mechanistic, or functional, validation studies using animal disease models, at this time. Hopefully, within a decade, we can make some breakthroughs on high-throughput gene/genome editing, and combine this with large-scale profiling of single-cell transcriptome and proteome to build disease animal models to functionally address the polygenicity of human diseases.

What changes do you think could improve the professional lives of early-career scientists?

We need to encourage, support and provide funding for early-career scientists to develop new models, methods and technologies. Also, rather than mostly promoting and focusing on well-established principal investigators, with more complete stories, early-career scientists need help with exposure in traditional networking and social media. I am especially thankful to the Disease Models & Mechanisms journal for giving me this opportunity to promote my novel work.

What's next for you?

I am currently looking for a tenure track faculty position to apply and expand my knowledge of IBD, zebrafish modeling and human mucosal immunology.

Footnotes

  • Ling-shiang Chuang's contact details: Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 1470 Madison Avenue, S8-202, New York, NY 10029, USA.

    E-mail: ling-shiang.chuang{at}mssm.edu

  • © 2019. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.

Reference

  1. ↵
    1. Chuang, L.-S.,
    2. Morrison, J.,
    3. Hsu, N.-Y.,
    4. Labrias, P. R.,
    5. Nayar, S.,
    6. Chen, E.,
    7. Villaverde, N.,
    8. Facey, J. A.,
    9. Boschetti, G.,
    10. Giri, M. et al.
    (2019). Zebrafish modeling of intestinal injury, bacterial exposures and medications defines epithelial in vivo responses relevant to human Inflammatory bowel disease. Dis. Model. Mech. 12, dmm037432. doi:10.1242/dmm.037432
    OpenUrlAbstract/FREE Full Text
Previous ArticleNext Article
Back to top
Previous ArticleNext Article

This Issue

RSSRSS

 Download PDF

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on Disease Models & Mechanisms.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
First person – Ling-shiang Chuang
(Your Name) has sent you a message from Disease Models & Mechanisms
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the Disease Models & Mechanisms web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
FIRST PERSON
First person – Ling-shiang Chuang
Disease Models & Mechanisms 2019 12: dmm041624 doi: 10.1242/dmm.041624 Published 13 August 2019
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
FIRST PERSON
First person – Ling-shiang Chuang
Disease Models & Mechanisms 2019 12: dmm041624 doi: 10.1242/dmm.041624 Published 13 August 2019

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Alerts

Please log in to add an alert for this article.

Sign in to email alerts with your email address

Article navigation

  • Top
  • Article
    • ABSTRACT
    • Footnotes
    • Reference
  • Figures & tables
  • Info & metrics
  • PDF

Related articles

Cited by...

More in this TOC section

  • First person – Masayoshi Ko
  • First person – Paco López-Cuevas
  • First person – Manh Tin Ho and Jiongming Lu
Show more FIRST PERSON

Similar articles

Other journals from The Company of Biologists

Development

Journal of Cell Science

Journal of Experimental Biology

Biology Open

Advertisement

DMM and COVID-19

We are aware that the COVID-19 pandemic is having an unprecedented impact on researchers worldwide. The Editors of all The Company of Biologists’ journals have been considering ways in which we can alleviate concerns that members of our community may have around publishing activities during this time. Read about the actions we are taking at this time.

Please don’t hesitate to contact the Editorial Office if you have any questions or concerns.


The twin pillars of Disease Models & Mechanisms

In her first Editorial as Editor-in-Chief, Liz Patton sets out her vision and priorities for DMM focusing on four thematic challenges: mechanisms of disease, innovative technologies, disease progression through time and therapy.


Extended deadline - The RAS Pathway: Diseases, Therapeutics and Beyond

Our upcoming special issue is welcoming submissions until 3 May 2021. Guest-edited by Donita Brady (Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, USA) and Arvin Dar (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, USA), the issue will focus on the targeting the RAS pathway.

Find out more about the issue and how to submit your manuscript.


Perspective - Modelling the developmental origins of paediatric cancer to improve patient outcomes

James Amatruda authors our first Perspective, discussing some of the key challenges in paediatric cancer from his perspective as a physician-scientist.


A muscle growth-promoting treatment based on the attenuation of activin/myostatin signalling results in long-term testicular abnormalities

In this issue’s Editor’s choice, Ketan Patel and colleagues describe how even brief exposure to muscle-growth-promoting treatments exerts a long-term detrimental effect on the testes, and test promising therapeutics to mitigate this side-effect.

Articles

  • Accepted manuscripts
  • Issue in progress
  • Latest complete issue
  • Issue archive
  • Archive by article type
  • Subject collections
  • Interviews
  • Sign up for alerts

About us

  • About DMM
  • Editors and Board
  • Editor biographies
  • Travelling Fellowships
  • Grants and funding
  • Journal Meetings
  • Workshops
  • The Company of Biologists

For Authors

  • Submit a manuscript
  • Aims and scope
  • Presubmission enquiries
  • Article types
  • Manuscript preparation
  • Cover suggestions
  • Editorial process
  • Promoting your paper
  • Open Access
  • Biology Open transfer

Journal Info

  • Journal policies
  • Rights and permissions
  • Media policies
  • Reviewer guide
  • Sign up for alerts

Contact

  • Contact DMM
  • Advertising
  • Feedback

Twitter   YouTube   LinkedIn

© 2021   The Company of Biologists Ltd   Registered Charity 277992