Affiliations

Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS

Education

Professional Experience

Research Interest

My research goals are to advance the understanding of the inherited basis for circulating lipid traits and non-circulating lipid traits underlying atherosclerosis and apply this understanding to the prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases (ASCVD) in patients. While numerous efforts have been spent on this mission, my research perspective will focus on lipid metabolism in ASCVD, in which a functional genomics approach will be applied to interrogate genes regulating circulating and plaque lipid metabolism.

Current Research Projects

1. Using functional genomics and CRISPR to discover new therapeutic targets for Familial Hypercholesterolemia.
2. Developing new therapeutic strategy targeting G Protein-coupled receptor 146 (GPR146) to treat cardiometabolic diseases.
3. Characterizing lipid metabolism in plaque and using CRISPR screening to identify novel players regulating plaque regression.
4. Developing novel genome editing tools for gene therapy.

Selected Publications

1. Toyohara, T., Roudnicky, F., Florido, M.H.C., Nakano, T., Yu, H., Katsuki, S., Lee, M., Meissner, T., Friesen, M., Davidow, L.S., et al. (2020). Patient hiPSCs Identify Vascular Smooth Muscle Arylacetamide Deacetylase as Protective against Atherosclerosis. Cell Stem Cell 27, 178-180.
2. Friesen, M., Warren, C.R., Yu, H., Toyohara, T., Ding, Q., Florido, M.H.C., Sayre, C., Pope, B.D., Goff, L.A., Rinn, J.L., et al. (2020). Mitoregulin Controls beta-Oxidation in Human and Mouse Adipocytes. Stem Cell Reports 14, 590-602. (Co-first author)
3. Chen, Z., Yu, H., Shi, X., Warren, C.R., Lotta, L.A., Friesen, M., Meissner, T.B., Langenberg, C., Wabitsch, M., Wareham, N., et al. (2020). Functional Screening of Candidate Causal Genes for Insulin Resistance in Human Preadipocytes and Adipocytes. Circ Res 126, 330-346.
4. Yu, H., Rimbert, A., Palmer, A.E., Toyohara, T., Xia, Y., Xia, F., Ferreira, L.M.R., Chen, Z., Chen, T., Loaiza, N., et al. (2019). GPR146 Deficiency Protects against Hypercholesterolemia and Atherosclerosis. Cell 179, 1276-1288 e1214. (First and Co-corresponding author)
5. Xu, Y.X., Redon, V., Yu, H., Querbes, W., Pirruccello, J., Liebow, A., Deik, A., Trindade, K., Wang, X., Musunuru, K., et al. (2018). Role of angiopoietin-like 3 (ANGPTL3) in regulating plasma level of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol. Atherosclerosis 268, 196-206.
6. Liu, D.J., Peloso, G.M., Yu, H., Butterworth, A.S., Wang, X., Mahajan, A., Saleheen, D., Emdin, C., Alam, D., Alves, A.C., et al. (2017). Exome-wide association study of plasma lipids in >300,000 individuals. Nat Genet 49, 1758-1766. (Co-first author)
7. Yu, H., and Cowan, C.A. (2016). Minireview: Genome Editing of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells for Modeling Metabolic Disease. Mol Endocrinol 30, 575-586.
8. Peter, S., Yu, H., Ivanyi-Nagy, R., and Droge, P. (2016). Cell-based high-throughput compound screening reveals functional interaction between oncofetal HMGA2 and topoisomerase I. Nucleic Acids Res 44, e162.
9. Yu, H., Lim, H.H., Tjokro, N.O., Sathiyanathan, P., Natarajan, S., Chew, T.W., Klonisch, T., Goodman, S.D., Surana, U., and Droge, P. (2014). Chaperoning HMGA2 protein protects stalled replication forks in stem and cancer cells. Cell Rep 6, 684-697.
10. Yu, H., and Droge, P. (2014). Replication-induced supercoiling: a neglected DNA transaction regulator? Trends Biochem Sci 39, 219-220.