Charles Chang

About

Charles Chang is an Assistant Professor of Environment at Duke Kunshan University, a position he has held since 2020. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2016. His professional profile is hosted on Scholars@Duke, where his academic credentials and current appointments are listed. Recent news highlights include his involvement in incorporating climate and sustainability topics into classes across Duke University, as reported in July 2024. Further detailed information about his research focus, background, and key contributions is not provided in the available page text.

Research topics

• Genetics
• Endocrinology
• Biology
• Cancer research
• Internal medicine
• Medicine
• Chemistry
• Immunology
• Biochemistry
• Cell biology

Selected publications

• Dysregulated cholesterol homeostasis results in resistance to ferroptosis increasing tumorigenicity and metastasis in cancer

  Nature Communications · 2021 · 333 citations

  Hypercholesterolemia and dyslipidemia are associated with an increased risk for many cancer types and with poor outcomes in patients with established disease. Whereas the mechanisms by which this occurs are multifactorial we determine that chronic exposure of cells to 27-hydroxycholesterol (27HC), an abundant circulating cholesterol metabolite, selects for cells that exhibit increased cellular uptake and/or lipid biosynthesis. These cells exhibit substantially increased tumorigenic and metastati…

  DOI

• Estrogen Receptor Signaling in the Immune System

  Endocrine Reviews · 2022 · 225 citations

  The immune system functions in a sexually dimorphic manner, with females exhibiting more robust immune responses than males. However, how female sex hormones affect immune function in normal homeostasis and in autoimmunity is poorly understood. In this review, we discuss how estrogens affect innate and adaptive immune cell activity and how dysregulation of estrogen signaling underlies the pathobiology of some autoimmune diseases and cancers. The potential roles of the major circulating estrogens…

  DOI

• Estrogen signaling suppresses tumor-associated tissue eosinophilia to promote breast tumor growth

  Science Advances · 2024-09-27 · 24 citations

  articleOpen access

  Estrogens regulate eosinophilia in asthma and other inflammatory diseases. Further, peripheral eosinophilia and tumor-associated tissue eosinophilia (TATE) predicts a better response to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) in breast cancer. However, how and if estrogens affect eosinophil biology in tumors and how this influences ICB efficacy has not been determined. Here, we report that estrogens decrease the number of peripheral eosinophils and TATE, and this contributes to increased tumor growth i…

  PublisherDOI

• Estrogens increase cancer cell efferocytosis to establish an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2024-12-26 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Phagocytic clearance of apoptotic cancer cells (efferocytosis) by tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) contributes in a substantial manner to the establishment of an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. This puts in context our observation that the female steroid hormone 17β-estradiol (E2) facilitates tumor immune resistance through cancer cell extrinsic Estrogen Receptor (ERalpha;) signaling in TAMs. Notable was the finding that E2 induces the expression of CX3CR1 in TAMs to enable efferocy…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The immunomodulatory impacts of endocrine therapy on host immunity in early-stage hormone receptor positive, HER2 negative breast cancer.

  Journal of Clinical Oncology · 2024-05-29 · 1 citations

  article

  572 Background: Endocrine therapy (ET) reduces mortality in hormonally driven breast cancer (BC). The impacts of ET on the estrogen receptor are well known; however, there is limited data on the impact of ET on the host's immune system. This project aims to elucidate the potential immunomodulatory effects of ET-induced estrogen deprivation in HR+/HER2 negative early-stage breast cancer patients (pts) as well as baseline differences between BC pts and healthy controls (HC). Methods: Pts with Stag…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant K01CA095094

  NIH · $379k · 2007

Frequent coauthors

• Donald P. McDonnell

  Duke University

  190 shared

• Sandeep Artham

  Duke University

  43 shared

• Dmitri Kazmin

  Stanford University

  39 shared

• Rachid Safi

  Duke University

  39 shared

• Debarati Mukherjee

  Duke University

  38 shared

• Patrick K. Juras

  Duke University

  35 shared

• John D. Norris

  33 shared

• Binita Chakraborty

  32 shared

Similar researchers at Duke University

• Xingshi Caih-31
• Stephanie Andersonh-13
• Yecheng (Kent) Caoh-9