University of Pittsburgh
Thong Luong

Graduate Student Researcher

2.35 University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute
thl27@pitt.edu

Education

BS, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Tennessee Knoxville, 2011

Research Summary

Helicases are crucial for repair, replication, and recombination of DNA as DNA must be unwound to begin any of these processes; I’m interested in elucidating the role of S. cerevisiae Hrq1 helicase as it will give us more insight into the important family of RecQ helicases.

Thong Luong

Helicases are crucial for repair, replication, and recombination of DNA as DNA must be unwound to begin any of these processes; I’m interested in elucidating the role of S. cerevisiae Hrq1 helicase as it will give us more insight into the important family of RecQ helicases.

Journal Articles

Bonilla B, Brown AI, Hengel SR, Rapchak KS, Mitchell D, Pressimone CA, Fagunloye AA, Luong TT, Russell RA, Vyas RK, Mertz TM, Zaher HS, Mosammaparast N, Malc EP, Mieczkowski PA, Roberts S, Bernstein KA. The Shu complex prevents mutagenesis and cytotoxicity of single-strand specific alkylation lesions. Elife. 2021 Nov 1;10:e68080. doi: 10.7554/eLife.68080. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 34723799.

 
Grimley E, Cole AJ, Luong TT, McGonigal SC, Sinno S, Yang D, Bernstein KA, Buckanovich RJ. Aldehyde dehydrogenase inhibitors promote DNA damage in ovarian cancer and synergize with ATM/ATR inhibitors. Theranostics. 2021 Jan 20;11(8):3540-3551. doi: 10.7150/thno.51885. PMID: 33664846; PMCID: PMC7914353.
 
Baldock RA, Pressimone CA, Baird JM, Khodakov A, Luong TT, Grundy MK, Smith CM, Karpenshif Y, Bratton-Palmer DS, Prakash R, Jasin M, Garcin EB, Gon S, Modesti M, Bernstein KA.  RAD51D splice variants and cancer-associated mutations reveal XRCC2 interaction to be critical for homologous recombination.DNA Repair (Amst). 2019 Apr;76:99-107. doi: 10.1016/j.dnarep.2019.02.008. Epub 2019 Feb 23. PMID: 30836272  PMCID: PMC6508892
 

Egnatchik RA, Brittain EL, Shah AT, Fares WH, Ford HJ, Monahan K, Kang CJ, Kocurek EG, Zhu S, Luong T, Nguyen TT, Hysinger E, Austin ED, Skala MC, Young JD, Roberts LJ 2nd, Hemnes AR, West J, Fessel JP. Dysfunctional BMPR2 signaling drives an abnormal endothelial requirement for glutamine in pulmonary arterial hypertension. Pulm Circ. 2017 Feb 1;7(1):186-199. doi: 10.1086/690236. eCollection 2017 Mar. PubMed PMID: 28680578; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5448547.

Hardeman KN, Peng C, Paudel BB, Meyer CT, Luong T, Tyson DR, Young JD, Quaranta V, Fessel JP. Dependence On Glycolysis Sensitizes BRAF-mutated Melanomas For Increased Response To Targeted BRAF Inhibition. Sci Rep. 2017 Feb 16;7:42604. doi: 10.1038/srep42604. PubMed PMID: 28205616; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5311997.

Awards and Honors