Phil Xie 謝非

  • Scholarship in 2019 at University of Oxford

Research interests

Development of a lot of tumours is currently thought to be a stepwise process, where normal cells undergo stages of dysplasia before finally becoming malignant cancers. This is particularly the case for esophageal adenocarcinoma (a subtype of esophageal cancer), where it has a macroscopically identifiable premalignant stage called Barrett’s esophagus (BE). The major risk factor for BE is gastroesophageal reflux, where gastric content goes into oesophagus and causes chronic inflammation. Once developed, BE persists even with adequate treatment of reflux disease. I am especially interested in understanding how chronic inflammation transforms the normal esophageal epithelium into BE-type epithelium, its underlying epigenetic changes, and its contribution to the development of esophageal cancers.

Background

I studied medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, after which I decided to pursue DPhil studies at the University of Oxford.