Jiakai Wu PhD

Typically, a patient’s asthma is described in terms of the disease phenotypes.

Although phenotypes are usually clinically relevant, in terms of presentation, triggers, and treatment response, they do not necessarily relate to or give any insight into the underlying disease processes.

Classifying asthma into sub-categories based on the pathophysiological mechanism of the disease will be the solution to provide patients with pertinent prevention or treatment in a long run.

The world’s leading experts in asthma treatment, (including us) have listed 7 criteria which are essential in defining an asthma sub-type. Genetics factor is one of the 7 criteria, as it is a strong causal factor of asthma.

As part of the big project, my role is to study the functionality of genetic polymorphism in genes which are highly related to asthma and Investigate the linkage between genetic variants and disease predisposition.

RNA and protein quantification

Molecular cloning and subsequent functional analysis