Lucy Liaw, Ph.D.

Center for Molecular Medicine
Maine Medical Center Research Institute
81 Research Drive
Scarborough, ME 04704
(207) 885-8142 Office
(207) 885-8177 Lab
(207) 885-8179 Fax
liawl@mmc.org

Biosketch

Lucy Liaw is a full time research scientist in the Center for Molecular Medicine. She attended the University of Washington, receiving her Ph.D. in Biological Structure/Pathology in 1994. Her post-doctoral work was performed in the Department of Cell Biology at Vanderbilt University, and she spent one year in the Division of Cardiology at Vanderbilt before joining the faculty at Maine Medical Center Research Institute in 1998. She is a member of the graduate faculty at the University of Maine, Orono.

Research Interests

My laboratory is interested in understanding how blood vessels develop during embryogenesis and repair themselves following vascular injury. We have recently focused on the family of Notch receptors, which have been shown to be highly expressed in large vessels during remodeling. Our goals are to understand the pathways by which Notch receptor signaling controls smooth muscle cell and endothelial cell behavior. These studies apply to human diseases including restenosis, atherosclerosis, and other vascular obstructive diseases. In addition, blood vessel recruitment and growth is a hallmark of successful tumors, and we are interested in signals that increase tumor cell growth and survival.

One of our major strategies is to create murine genetic transgenic models in which we can activate or inhibit Notch receptor signaling in a vascular-specific manner. These models will allow us to develop in vivo systems to understand blood vessel remodeling and tumor growth.

I also direct the Molecular Genetics Core Facility in the Center for Molecular Medicine, which is a resource for the generation of transgenic and gene-targeted models. This service allows investigators to submit transgenes of interest for pronuclear injection to obtain transgenic animals, or target specific genes in embryonic stem cells. Other resources available through this Core Facility are cryoprotection of mouse lines, re-derivation, embryo staging and collection, and maintenance of shared strains for investigator use.

Selected Publications

Liaw L, Crawford HC: Functions of the extracellular matrix and matrix degrading proteases during tumor progression. Braz. J.Med. Biol. Res. 1999, 32:805-812.

Wong MKK, Prudovsky I, Vary C, Booth C, Liaw L, Mousa S, Small D, Maciag T: Jagged-1 regulates the formation of matrix-dependent chord-like structures in vitro and angiogenesis in vivo. Biochem, Biophys. Res. Comm. 2000,268:853-859.

Trueblood N, Xie Z, Communal C, Sam F, Ngoy S, Liaw L, Wang J, Sawyer D, Bing OHL, Apstein CS, Colucci WS, Singh K: Exaggerated left ventricular dilation and reduced collagen deposition post myocardial infaction in mice lacking osteopontin.  Circ Res 2001 88(10):1080-1087

Agnihotri R, Crawford HC, Haro H, Matrisian LM, Havrda MC, Liaw L:  Osteopontin, a novel substrate for matrix metalloproteinase-3 (stromelysin-1) and matrix metalloproteinase-7 (matrilysin). J. Biol. Chem. 2001 276(30):28261-28267.

Small D, Kovalenko D, Kacer D, Liaw L, Landriscina M, Di Serio C, Prudovsky I, Maciag T: Soluble jagged1 repressed the function of its transmembrane form to induce the formation of the src-dependent chord-like phenotype. J Biol Chem. 2001 276(34):32022-30.

Lindner V, Booth C, Prudovsky I, Small D, Maciag T, Liaw L: Members of the Jagged/Notch gene families are expressed in injured arteries and regulate cell phenotype via alterations in cell-matrix and cell-cell interaction. Am. J. Pathol. 2001 159(3):875-883.

Speer MY, McKee MD, Guldbery RE, Liaw L, Karsenty G, Yang H-Y, Tung E, Giachelli CM: Inactivation of the osteopontin gene enhances vascular calcification of matrix Gla protein-deficient mice: evidence for osteopontin as an inducible inhibitor of vascular calcification in vivo. In press,  J. Exp. Med. 2002 196(8):1047-1055.

Small, D., Kovalenko, D., Soldi, R., Mandinova, A., Kolev, V., Trifonova, R., Bagalá, C., Kacer, D., Batelli, C., Liaw L., Prudovsky, I. and Maciag, T., Repression of Notch Signaling Enables FGF-Dependent NIH 3T3 Cell Transformation. J. Biol. Chem., 2003; 278(18):16405-16413.

Myers, D.L., Harmon, K.J., Lindner, V. and Liaw, L., Alterations of arterial physiology in osteopontin-null mice. Arterioscler. Thromb. Vasc. Biol., 2003; 23(6):1021-1028.

Mouta, C., Liaw, L. and Maciag, T., Angiogenesis: cellular and molecular aspects of post-natal vessel formation. In Handbook of Cellular Signaling, Edited by Bradshaw, R., and Dennis, E. Academic Press, 2003.

Myers, D.L., and Liaw, L., Improved analysis of the vascular response to arterial ligation using a multivariate approach. Am. J. Pathol, 2004;164(1):43-48.

Ishii T, Ohshima S, Ishida T, Kawase I, Mima T, Tabunoki Y, Kobayashi H, Maeda M, Uede T, Liaw L, Kinoshita N, Saeki Y. Mice with osteopontin deletion remain predisposed to collagen-induced arthritis. Arthritis Rheum. 2004;50(2):669-671.

Trifonova R, Small D, Kacer D, Kovalenko D, Kolev V, Mandinova A, Soldi R, Liaw L, Prudovsky I, Maciag T. The non-transmembrane form of Delta1 but not of jagged1 Induces normal migratory behavior accompanied by FGF receptor 1-dependent transformation. J Biol Chem. 2004,279:13285-13288.

Gao YA, Agnihotri R, Vary CPH, Liaw L. Expression and characterization of recombinant osteopontin peptides representing matrix metalloproteinase proteolytic fragments. Matrix Biology, 2004 23:457-466.

Pyagay P, Heroult M, Wang Q, Lehnert W, Belden J, Liaw L, Friesel RE, Lindner V. Collagen triple helix repeat containing 1, a novel secreted protein in injured and diseased arteries, inhibits collagen expression and promotes cell migration. Circ. Res. 2005 96:261-268.

Wilson MJ, Liaw L, Koopman P. Osteopontin and related SIBLING glycoprotein genes are expressed by Sertoli cells during mouse testis development. Dev. Dyn. 2005 233:1488-1495.

Tsai AT, Rice J, Scatena M, Liaw L, Ratner BD, Giachelli CM. The role of osteopontin in foreign body giant cell formation. Biomaterials 2005 26:5835-5843.

Hara-Kaonga B, Gao YA, Havrda M, Harrington A, Bergquist I, Liaw L. Variable recombination efficiency in responder transgenes activated by Cre recombinase in the vasculature. Transgenic Research 2006, 15:101-106.

Lab Photo

Back row: Anne Harrington, Lucy Liaw, Ruth Leon
Front row: Deepak Venkatesh, Sumithra Urs, Laura Miceli-Libby, Christine O'Neill, Bochiwe Hara-Kaonga, Yuefeng Tang