Lina HK Lim

Lina HK Lim

PhD

Associate Professor

+65-6516-5515 (Office)

phslhkl@nus.edu.sg

Inflammation and Cancer

ORCID

Affiliations

  • Associate Professor, Department of Physiology, National University of Singapore
  • Assistant Dean (Administration), Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS Immunology Translational Research Programme, NUS

Research Areas of Interest:

  • Tumor microenvironment
  • Inflammation and cancer
  • Innate immunity

Biography

I am an immunologist with more than 20 years of experience in inflammatory diseases and models such as asthma, infection and cancer.  A major focus of my research is to understand the regulation of inflammation and immune responses and dysregulation by a particular protein, Annexin-1, with regards to disease etiology, in particular reference to tumorigenesis, and the tumor and  the innate immune response.

Research Synopsis

My recent interests have been focused on the role of chronic stress (environmental and psychological) and stress hormones in breast cancer development and progression. Developing a research program into stress and stress relieving practices (either pharmacological or environmental or health policy related) I believe would be impactful in cancer prevention.  I now am involved in 3 external projects with colleagues from nursing and psychological medicine understanding the impact of stress and interventions such as mindfulness, forest walking and choral singing on disease and quality of life.

Specific projects my lab is focused on now are innate immunity based projects on (1) the importance of Annexin-A1 in STING-dependent anti-tumor responses in the tumor microenvironment, which leads on from my previous work on alternatively activated macrophages in the tumor microenvironment and (2) differential responses to influenza after pre-exposure to coronaviruses.  This stems from an observation in the early days of the COVID pandemic that no or minimal influenza infections were observed, while other respiratory viruses such as RSV were still evident during the pandemic.  Our hypothesis is that there could be an immune dependent or interferon dependent cross-talks between influenza and coronaviruses immune responses, and we will use mouse models and human PBMCs to begin to understand these mechanisms.

Selected Publications

  1. Foo SL, Yap G, Cui J, Lim LHK. Annexin-A1 – A Blessing or a Curse in Cancer.  Trends Mol Med. 2019 Apr;25(4):315-327.
  2. Chua SCJH, Tan HQ, Engelberg D, Lim LHK. Alternative Experimental Models for Studying Influenza Proteins, Host-Virus Interactions and Anti-Influenza Drugs. Pharmaceuticals (Basel). 2019 Sep 30;12(4). pii: E147.
  3. Patrick B. Ampomah, Lina H.K. Lim. Influenza A virus-induced apoptosis and propagation. Apoptosis 2020 Feb;25(1-2):1-11.
  4. Cui J, Morgan D, Cheng DH, et al. RNA-Sequencing-Based Transcriptomic Analysis Reveals a Role for Annexin-A1 in Classical and Influenza A Virus-Induced Autophagy. Cells. 2020;9(6):1399. Published 2020 Jun 4. doi:10.3390/cells9061399
  5. Yap GLR, Sachaphibulkij K, Foo SL, Cui J, Fairhurst AM, Lim LHK. Annexin-A1 promotes RIG-I-dependent signaling and apoptosis via regulation of the IRF3-IFNAR-STAT1-IFIT1 pathway in A549 lung epithelial cells. Cell Death Dis. 2020;11(6):463.
  6. Foo SL, Sachaphibulkij K, Lee CLY, Yap GLR, Cui J, Arumugam T, Lim LHK. Breast cancer metastasis to brain results in recruitment and activation of microglia through annexin-A1/formyl peptide receptor signaling. Breast Cancer Res. 2022 Apr 5;24(1):25.
  7. Cui J, Sachaphibulkij K, Teo WS, Lim HM, Zou L, Ong CN, Alberts R, Chen J, Lim LHK. Annexin-A1 deficiency attenuates stress-induced tumor growth via fatty acid metabolism in mice: an Integrated multiple omics analysis on the stress- microbiome-metabolite-epigenetic-oncology (SMMEO) axis. Theranostics 2022; 12(8):3794-3817.
  8. Shorey S, Asurlekar AR, Chua JS, Lim LHK. Influence of Oxytocin on Parenting Behaviors and Parent-child Bonding: A Systematic Review. Developmental Psychobiology 2023, 65(2): e22359.
  9. Chew ZH, Cui J, Sachaphibulkij K, Tan I, Kar S, Koh KK, Singh K, Lim HM, Lee SC, Kumar AP, Gasser S, Lim LHK. Macrophage IL-1β contributes to tumorigenesis through paracrine AIM2 inflammasome activation in the tumor microenvironment. Front Immunol. 2023 Jun 28;14:1211730. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2023.1211730. PMID: 37449203; PMCID: PMC10338081.
  10. Yoong J, Alonso S, Chan CW, Clement MV, Lim LHK, Archuleta S. Investing in gender equity in health and biomedical research: a Singapore perspective. Lancet. 2019 Feb 9;393(10171):e21-e22.

Service

I have been an Assistant Dean (Enterprise) appointed by the Dean of Medicine since October 2020.  In this capacity, I have given strategic advice and have been a part of much of the planning and changes in the school, namely in space optimization and strategic planning to align with the vision of the school to futurize our students and staff.  In Oct 2023 I was renamed Assistant Dean (Administration) and I focus on meeting and helping executive and administrative staff from all departments and divisions in NUS Medicine, with the hope to understand their difficulties and resolve issues which they may be facing.

Awards

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