Chao-Yu accidentally entered FCT lab when Feng-Chiao described FGFR as a mysterious creature (of course, it’s a receptor). Ever since then, she started to struggle, trying to figure out the characteristic of FGFR. Two years later, the team noticed that the ablation of FGFR2 affects EGFR’s distribution. This was probably the most excited thing Chao-Yu had found in her so called “research life”. She is currently taking a pause from her research journey while seeking for her ultimate goal in life.

Hsuan-Chao is not only a humble servant but also an adjunct Ph.D. student in Dr. Tsai’s lab. He is a foodie and enjoys exploring tasty food. If you have extra food to share, he would be very grateful of your generosity. In his spare time, he likes to go hiking. At work, he always feels that he does everything with a willing heart but ended up being tired and emptied. However, he is good at picking himself up from where he has fallen.

I am Jia-Ming Zhang. I graduated from the department of Medical Technology in Chung Shan Medical University, where I am also certified as a licensed Medical Technologist. After entering graduate school, I joined the SLK squad focusing on how SLK affects cell migration synergistically with ROCK. For now, completing the master’s degree is what has been on my mind, and I believe this experience will carry me to my future route.

This is Jian-Wei Wu. I came from an agricultural county called Yulin. I graduated from the department of Pharmacy at CMU in 2014. With two years of working experience as a pharmacist in the hospital, I am good at communicating with patients. Though taking care of patients is a good thing, it’s a bit dull for me to repeat the same tasks over and over again. I wanted to be more accomplished in learning new things. Therefore, I decided to quit my job and apply for the graduate program of the department of pharmacology at NTU. During my graduate student life, I wish to make my best efforts to complete every single thing. Hopefully, I can figure out my ultimate path.

Hi, I am LiDi. I used to dream of being a zoo manager when I was a child for then I could see a variety of small animals everyday. That was why I majored in animal science in college, but it turned out to be different from my expectations. I thus double majored in pharmacy and worked as a researcher in a pharmaceutical company. My work experience equipped me with problem solving ability, and made me want to widen my vision, strengthen my professional knowledge , and enhance my ability to solve more advanced and novel problems. Therefore, I went back to school for graduate level study. Research can be frustrating at times but it can also bring a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. My future goal is to continue to do research in pharmaceutical companies and bring the candidate drugs that I am working on to the real market.

Ling-Yea loves English, science, history, and enjoyed music and reading. She studies pharmacy during college, and believed that devoting in pharmaceutical scientific research can be a challenging but world-changing task. Therefore she acquired her master’s degree in pharmacology in Dr. Feng-Chiao Tsai’s lab (FCT lab) at NTU, hoping to receive trainings of a scientific researcher and gain insights on drug and medicine discovery. She hopes that by diving into the career drug discovery, she can bring a significant impact to the society we reside in.

Ling-Yea spent most of her master’s degree (and her later research assistant work) studying STK40-MAPK interaction in cell migration. STK40 is a novel serine-threonine kinase protein that may not have kinase function. Studying this novel research is not an easy task, just as discovering new planets in the dark universe. With the help of Ting-Jeng, a cheerful and smart master student, and Hsuan-Chao, a diligent and supportive doctoral student, they struggled hard to exclude improbable mechanisms and screen out possible ones. Soon they disclosed that STK40 has effect on focal adhesion and does interact with MAPK in regulating cytoskeleton in a non-kinase manner. Hopefully, together with other FCT lab companions they can further clarify the mysterious and unique protein, STK40, and publish this story soon.

Mary is a research assistant in Dr. Tsai’s lab. “He” got the license of respiratory therapist after leaving from the college life. Because Mary also has a great interest in physiology, after his graduation from college, he entered the department of pharmacology at NTU. During his life at the graduate school, he focused on inflammatory response in kidney injury. Mary joined the FCT lab in late 2018 and restored his passion in science. Mary appreciated working in the FCT lab, and he finally realized that he would like to be a scientist in the future. Currently, Mary is planning to take TOEFL and GRE exam, and apply to a Ph.D. program abroad. If you have any suggestion, please feel free to contact him. Mary will send a ton of appreciation to you☺.

Pei-Ju is a Ph.D. student who has continued in the FCT lab after receiving his master’s degree. In his master student career, Pei-Ju mainly focused on HBx, a hepatitis B viral protein, and its impacts on calcium homeostasis. Since Pei-Ju and Guan-Hung were the first students joining Dr. Tsai’s group, he also made an endeavor to establish a platform which suits for performing calcium-related live-cell imaging assays. After Pei-Ju got his Master’s degree, he rejoined the laboratory. Currently, he is studying on KCNT1, a potassium channel, and its capability to modulate potassium and calcium homeostasis.

Pei-Yu joined the FCT lab as a fresh graduate student this year. Previously, she obtained her bachelor’s degree in biomedical sciences at Chang-Gung University. Pharmacology caught her sight during her undergraduate exchange to National University of Singapore, which led her to the institute of pharmacology at NTU. Currently, Pei-Yu is focusing on a joint project in the applications of chick embryo chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) model on angiogenesis co-supervised by Dr. Feng-Chiao Tsai and Dr. Ruby Yun-Ru Huang. She believes that she will surely gain a lot from the solid academic trainings during this co-supervision. Please feel free to contact if any further related information is needed.

I am a co-advisor student of Dr.Tsai and Dr.Tu from the Institute of Chemistry at Academia Sinica. My research interest is to study how protein interaction affects HNSCC cell migration. We establish a CRISPR knock-in cell line and a fluorescence correlation spectroscopy model to study protein-protein interactions. On the other hand, we designed a microfluidic device to study migration.

Entering the second year of his master’s degree, Ken keeps his enthusiasm for research. When exploring the secret of science, Ken tries his best to satisfy his curiosity for nature. Outside of the lab, Ken loves watching sports games and movies, such as MLB and romantic movies like “Hitch”. Besides science, Ken has passion for poetry. In his free time, Ken writes some poems to express his desire for characters. He plays guitar and fills in the lyrics into his songs as well. With these interests, Ken flavors his life with both science, literature, and music.

I am Sin-Yu, a girl who loves pink. At times when life is not going well, seeing this bright color can cheer me up and make me feel happy. I graduate from Taipei Medical University, where I majored in Pharmacy. Although most of my classmates choose to be a pharmacist, I made a different decision: apply for graduate school. The reason is that I hope to explore more possibilities in the future. A cup of coffee in the morning can wake me up, and the aroma can refresh my mind. I enjoy music, reading, and going on a trip, these things enrich my life.

All things in their being are good for something.

I majored in life science in college since I was curious about lives on the earth and wanted to know the secret of life. After getting my bachelor’s degree, I realized there is still a gap between knowing and doing. For instance, from the textbook, I knew scientists could do genome editing, but I still did not know how to do it exactly. In addition, I wanted to utilize what I learn to help people around the world, like developing new drugs to save patients. Therefore, I studied pharmacology in graduate school to obtain more knowledge about biology and set off my journey to be a scientist.

Recently, I want to advance my knowledge so I am preparing to apply for the Ph.D. program. (If you have any recommend programs or opportunities, please contact me).

I wish I could bring about a beneficial effect to our world.

Yen-hsuan graduated from the department of Life Sciences and the department of Chinese Literature. Currently, she has joined Dr. Feng-Chiao Tsai's lab as a pharmacology graduate student. Out of the lab, Yen-hsuan also likes novels, badminton and good movies. Lately, she is looking forward to the the release of the movie Frozen 2.

Yin-Shan is a master student in Dr. Feng-Chiao Tsai's lab. She was interested in cell migration when she saw the wound healing movie during the rotation. That's the reason why she wants to study here. Currently, she does research in trophoblast and she wants to know how calcium mechanism regulates trophoblast invasion. Yin-Shan also enjoys singing and dancing. She usually practices dancing twice a week. Although her life becomes busier, she will do her best to do everything her heart desires.

Yuan-Yuan knew that she was formed in God's hands, dreamed up in His heart, and placed in this world for a purpose. The composition of Yuan-Yuan consists 70% of sensibility and 30% of rationality, so she has chosen something that advocates both the scientific thoughts and spirit as her major, like pharmacy and biology-related researches, trying to balance herself. However, the HBx protein (Hepatitis B X protein) played circles around her during the master’s degree phase that she sometimes felt depressed and forgot the fact that the universe created by God, and it is too amazing to be easily uncovered. Yuan-Yuan definitely loves transferring concepts of something meaningful, such as critical scientific knowledge and precious feelings, to those who are willing to listen, and she also enjoys receiving them from her beloved ones. Currently, the biggest challenge for her is to see whether applying the Ph.D. program is the best choice for her. Perhaps someday she could become an inspirational advisor and teacher like Dr. Tsai.

To uncover the mystery that whether HBx-induced events are calcium dependent.

HBx (Hepatitis B virus X) is a viral protein encoded by HBV(Hepatitis B virus), and it is reported to be highly related to the incidence of HBV-related HCC (Hepatocellular carcinoma). HCC takes the greatest part of hepatic cancer without effective ways to reach the cure, unfortunately. Due to the relationship between HBx and its abilities to promote HBV replication and transcription, and the phenomena indicated by previous reports that the homolog of anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2, CED-9, was targeted by HBx to elevate intracellular calcium signaling and alteration of cytosolic calcium was essential for HBV replication mediated by HBx, we came up with an idea that perhaps HBx may lead to HCC by regulating calcium signaling. To address our question, we divided it into two parts, to clarify HBx-induced calcium signaling, and to find out whether HBx-related effects are calcium-dependent. My project focused on the latter part.

As for now, we found that HBx significantly induced cell count reduction and tried to figure out its association to calcium signaling. Besides, we used EGF (epidermal growth factor) as a positive control to examine cell count and surprisingly found that HBx seemed to reduce the effect of EGF-related cell number addition on two cell lines, HepG2 and FL83B. We have tried to explore whether the effect of HBx on cell number is dependent on EGFR signaling, and the association between EGFR activation and calcium signaling made us to examine HBx effect on EGFR expression and its downstream signaling pathway. The main result revealed that HBx enhanced the signal of phosphorylated ERK and shortened the duration of phosphorylated AKT signaling. Currently, we are working on using GCaMP6s as a calcium indicator to compare calcium signaling change on HBx and control group after EGF treatment.

Yu-Chiao is a Ph.D. student with pharmacist license. She loves basketball, handwriting and photography. Her research interest is also related to photography, she took a lot of pictures of small things inside the cells (subcellular compartments such as ER and mitochondria), and large things as basketball games, tourist scenery. Yu-Chiao is also fascinated by calcium, a molecule needed everywhere in cells, and interested in the relationship between calcium and mitochondria-associated membranes.