Dr. Eric Lau (Le-Lau) is an Associate Professor in the Division of Oncological Sciences at the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health and Science University.  

The Lau team studies how our cells use L-fucose (LF), a dietary sugar found in abundance in red and brown seaweeds. Unlike other dietary sugars, LF, is not used by mammalian cells for production of energy but rather as a modifier of glycoproteins and glycolipids via a process called fucosylation. During his postdoctoral training, which largely focused on oncogenic transcription in melanoma, Dr. Lau found that global fucosylation is altered during melanoma progression, prompting his subsequent focus and studies on fucosylation-regulated signaling in cancer. The core of his research program focuses on elucidating (i) how protein fucosylation regulates tumor intrinsic biology and tumor:stromal interactions, and (ii) how L-fucose, fucosylated proteins, and/or fucosylation-regulated signaling can be leveraged as novel therapeutic and diagnostic approaches to treat cancer.

The laboratory historically has focused on melanoma and breast cancer as models for delineating fucosylation-regulated signaling and biology, although their mechanistic findings and efforts are easily extended to other cancer types. His team implements multi-omics and interdisciplinary approaches to dissect actionable molecular mechanisms, delineating their cellular biological and functional contributions to cancer pathogenesis, determining in vivo impacts, and mapping their in vitro findings to patient specimens for clinical correlations.

Dr. Lau is a dedicated mentor for graduate students and other research trainees. He is passionate about developing mechanisms of engagement between researchers and patients to motivate and educate researchers on the patient experience and to allow for patients to experience research laboratories and have a direct line of communication with the research enterprise. He is committed to advocacy and building community support. He currently serves as Community Relations Strategist of the Knight Cancer Research Training and Education Coordination (CRTEC) office and as a co-chair of the OHSU Asian Pacific Islander Employee Resource Group (ERGs). He is actively pursuing collaborations with university and community organizations to coordinate intersectional and culturally competent efforts aimed at building community support and engagement.

Dr. Lau received his B.S. and Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Molecular Pathology, respectively, from the University of California, San Diego (La Jolla, CA) and did his postdoctoral training at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (La Jolla, CA). Prior to relocating his laboratory and team to the Knight Cancer Institute at OHSU, Dr. Lau was a tenured Associate Professor at the Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute (Tampa, FL).