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Baoli Hu, PhD

  • Assistant Professor of Neurological Surgery
  • Director, Brain Tumor Evolution & Therapy Lab

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

Hu received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Northwest A&F University and his PhD degree in microbiology from Wuhan University and completed his postdoctoral training in molecular oncology at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 2017, Dr. Hu was a senior research scientist in the Department of Genomic Medicine and Cancer Biology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center from 2011-17, working in the lab of Ronald A. DePinho, MD. From 2007-11 he worked with Dr. DePinho as a research scientist in the Department of Medical Oncology and Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at the Harvard Medical School.

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.    

Education & Training

  • BS, Northwest A&F University, China, 1998
  • PhD, Wuhan University, China, 2004

Selected Publications

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

Academic and Research Interests

  • Brain Tumors
  • Glioblastoma
  • Medulloblastoma
  • Tumor Ecosystem
  • Tumor Evolution 
  • Tumor Genetics and Epigenomics
  • Brain Development
  • Pedicatric Brain Tumors 
  • Cancer Drug and Biomarker Development