Congratulations to Xu Huang who worked as a postdoc in Dario Alessi's lab (November 2004-May 2008) who has just been appointed to a group leader position at The Paul O'Gorman Leukaemia Research Centre, Institute of Cancer Research, University of Glasgow.



Whilst a postdoc in Dundee, Xu conducted important research that demonstrated that activating AMPK kinase in PTEN-deficient mice delayed the onset of tumour formation. The Biochemical Journal paper describing these findings currently has 148 citations. These findings also played an important role in stimulating many of the 196 different clinical trials that are taking place to evaluate the benefits of Metformin in preventing and treating human cancers. Xu also played an important role in the identification of the novel mTOR complex-2 component termed PROTOR, a paper that has 146 citations to date.



After training at the MRC-PPU Xu undertook a second postdoc with Dr Tim Somervaille, at the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research at The University of Manchester where he published interesting papers on the molecular basis of Leukaemia, identifying and validating a few potential candidates as therapeutic treatment targets in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML).

In his future research Xu plans to combine his past and current experiences in cell signalling and epigenetic regulation in leukaemia cancer stem cells, exploring the potential cross-talk between them, and continue to identify novel pathways and targets in leukaemia, and says "I am looking forward to working with other group leaders in the Paul O'Gorman Leukaemia Research Centre, lead by Professor Tessa Holyoake, and I hope to be able to establish future collaborations with Dario and other former colleagues in Dundee."

We wish Xu every success in starting up his new research laboratory.