2006 ASBMB Fellowship: Yuh Ping Chong

Yuh Ping Chong Yuh Ping left Malaysia in 1999 to pursue tertiary education at the University of Melbourne. During the third year of her BSc, she undertook an undergraduate research project on mutations in the tumour suppressor protein PTEN in the laboratory of Dr Heung-Chin Cheng in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Her formal research training began with an Honours degree under the joint supervision of Dr Heung-Chin Cheng and Dr Terry Mulhern. Her project examined the mechanism of inactivation of Src-family kinases, enzymes which are frequently upregulated in many types of human cancer.

In the following year, 2003, Yuh Ping commenced PhD studies to further characterise how CHK, an endogenous inhibitor of Src-family kinases, acts to oppose Src oncogenic activity. It is generally believed that Src inactivation is achieved solely by phosphorylation of a consensus inhibitory tyrosine residue and that CHK suppresses Src activity simply by phosphorylating this tyrosine. However, Yuh Ping's research has uncovered a novel second way CHK inactivates Src-family kinases. She demonstrated that CHK can form a stable complex with Src in vitro and in vivo; that the complex formation occurs independently of tyrosine phosphorylation; and that the complex formation is sufficient to inhibit Src activity. More recently, Yuh Ping has shown that CHK can inhibit all known active forms of Src-family kinases, some of which would otherwise escape down-regulation by tyrosine phosphorylation. This work suggests that this unique anti-tumourigenic property of CHK may provide a new avenue for the development of drug molecules to specifically target over-active Src-family kinases. Yuh Ping will use this ASBMB Fellowship to attend the 20th IUBMB Congress in Kyoto in June to present her findings. She will meet with Dr Naoto Yamaguchi and his team who are experts in the nuclear regulation of CHK. She hopes to gain new insights into the rapid progress of cancer biology/kinase regulation through the congress.

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This page last modified: October 10, 2008.