Baoli Hu, Ph.D.

Baoli HuPosition Title:

Assistant Professor of Neurological Surgery, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine; Richard King Mellon Scholar of Pediatric Research at the UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh; the member of the Cancer Biology Program at the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center.

Office Location:

7127 Rangos Research Building
UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh
4401 Penn Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15224

Contact Information:

Office Telephone: 412-692-9457
Email: baolihu@pitt.edu; baoli.hu3@chp.edu

Research Interests:

Dr. Hu’s research aims to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms of brain tumor evolution, and to develop new therapies for these devastating diseases. His areas of special interest include oncobiology of glioma and medulloblastoma; cancer stem cells; tumor cell plasticity and tumor microenvironment; functional cancer genomics; the relationship between brain developmental trajectory and tumorigenesis in pediatric brain cancers; mechanisms of tumor initiation, progression, treatment-resistance, and metastasis/recurrence; brain tumor immunotherapy; translational research in druggable target and predictive biomarker discovery.

Selected Publications (* co-first author, # correspondence author):

View Dr. Hu's full list of publications from PubMed

  1. Chen A, Jiang Y, Li Z, Wu L, Santiago U, Zou H, Cai C, Sharma V, Guan Y, McCarl LH, Ma J, Wu YL, Michel J, Shi Y, Konnikova L, Amankulor NM, Zinn PO, Kohanbash G, Agnihotri S, Lu S, Lu X, Sun D, Gittes GK, Wang Q, Xiao X, Yimlamai D, Pollack IF, Camacho CJ, Hu B#. Chitinase-3-like-1 protein complexes modulate macrophage-mediated immune suppression in glioblastoma. J Clin Invest. 2021 Aug 16;131(16): e147552. doi: 10.1172/JCI147552.
  2. Arabzade A, Zhao Y, Varadharajan S, Chen HC, Jessa S, Rivas B, Stuckert AJ, Solis M, Kardian A, Tlais D, Golbourn BJ, Stanton AJ, Chan YS, Olson C, Karlin KL, Kong K, Kupp R, Hu B, Injac SG, Ngo M, Wang PR, De Leon LA, Sahm F, Kawauchi D, Pfister SM, Lin CY, Hodges HC, Singh I, Westbrook TF, Chintagumpala MM, Blaney SM, Parsons DW, Pajtler KW, Agnihotri S, Gilbertson RJ, Yi J, Jabado N, Kleinman CL, Bertrand KC, Deneen B, Mack SC. ZFTA-RELA Dictates Oncogenic Transcriptional Programs to Drive Aggressive Supratentorial Ependymoma. Cancer Discov. 2021 Sep;11(9):2200-2215. doi: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-20-1066. Epub 2021 Mar 19. PMID: 33741710.
  3. Raphael I, Kumar R, McCarl LH, Shoger K, Wang L, Sandlesh P, Sneiderman CT, Allen J, Zhai S, Campagna ML, Foster A, Bruno TC, Agnihotri S, Hu B, Castro BA, Lieberman FS, Broniscer A, Diaz AA, Amankulor NM, Rajasundaram D, Pollack IF, Kohanbash G. TIGIT and PD-1 immune checkpoint pathways are associated with patient outcome and anti-tumor immunity in GBM. Front Immunol. 2021 May 7; 12:637146. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.637146. eCollection 2021.
  4. Shen Z, Xiang Y, Vergara S, Chen A, Xiao Z, Santiago U, Jin C, Sang Z, Luo J, Chen K, Schneidman-Duhovny D, Camacho C, Calero G, Hu B, Shi Y. A resource of high-quality and versatile nanobodies for drug delivery. iScience. 2021 Aug 21;24(9):103014. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.103014. eCollection 2021 Sep 24. PMID: 34522857.
  5. Hu B, Wang Q, Wang YA, Hua S, Sauve, GC, Ong DS, Zheng, DL, Chang Q, Ho YW, Monasterio, MM, Lu,X, Zhong Y, Zhang J, Deng P, Tan Z, Wang G, Liao, W, Corley LJ, Yan H, Zhang J, You, Y, Liu N, Cai L, Finocchiaro G, Phillips JJ, Berger MS, Spring DJ, Hu J, Sulman EP, Fuller GN, Chin L, Verhaak RGW, DePinho RA. Epigenetic activation of WNT5A drives glioblastoma stem cell differentiation and invasive growth. Cell, 2016,167 (5):1281-1295.
  6. Wang Q, Hu B*, Hu X, Kim H, Squatrito M, Scarpace L, deCarvalho AC, Lyu S, Li P, Li Y, Barthel F, Cho HJ, Lin YH, Satani N, Martinez-Ledesma E, Zheng S, Chang E, Sauvé CG, Olar A, Lan ZD, Finocchiaro G, Phillips JJ, Berger MS, Gabrusiewicz KR, Wang G, Eskilsson E, Hu J, Mikkelsen T, DePinho RA, Muller F, Heimberger AB, Sulman EP, Nam DH, Verhaak RGW. Tumor Evolution of Glioma-Intrinsic Gene Expression Subtypes Associates with Immunological Changes in the Microenvironment. Cancer Cell, 2017 Jul 10;32(1):42-56.
  7. Ong DST, Hu B*, Ho YW, Sauve, GC, Bristow CA, Wang Q, Multani SA, Chen P, Nezi L, Jiang S, Gorman CE, Monasterio, MM, Koul D, Marchesini M, Colla S, Jin EJ, Sulman EP, Lang FF, Spring DJ, Yung AW, Verhaak RGW, Chin L, Wang YA, and DePinho RA. PAF promotes stemness and radioresistance of glioma stem cells. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 2017 114 (43) E9086-E9095.
  8. Shingu T, Ho A, Yuan L, Zhou X, Dai C, Zheng S, Wang Q, Zhong Y, Chang, Q, Horner J, Liebelt BD, Yao Y, Hu B, Chen Y, Fuller GN, Verhaak RGW, Heimberger AM, Hu J. QKI deficiency maintains stemness of glioma stem cells in suboptimal environment by downregulating endolysosomal degradation. Nature Genetics, 2017 49 (1):75–86.
  9. Muller FL, Colla S, Aquilanti E, Manzo VE, Genovese G, Lee J, Eisenson D, Narurkar R, Deng P, Nezi L, Lee MA, Hu B, Hu J, Sahin E, Ong D, Fletcher-Sananikone E, Ho D, Kwong L, Brennan C, Wang YA, Chin L, DePinho RA. Passenger deletions generate therapeutic vulnerabilities in cancer. Nature. 2012 488(7411):337-42.
  10. Chen AJ, Paik JH, Zhang H, Shukla SA, Mortensen R, Hu J, Ying H, Hu B, Hurt J, Farny N, Dong C, Xiao Y, Wang YA, Silver PA, Chin L, Vasudevan S, Depinho RA. STAR RNA-binding protein Quaking suppresses cancer via stabilization of specific miRNA. Genes Dev. 2012 26(13):1459-72.