The overarching goal of Wan laboratory, within the Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology at Emory University, is to define the molecular mechanisms of breast tumor initiation, progression, and metastasis, and to identify novel targets for therapeutic development. Particularly, the laboratory seeks to address how defects in the ubiquitin-proteasome system and other posttranslational modifiers such as protein methyltransferase, poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase and glycosyltransferase would result in deregulated tumor immune checkpoint function, genomic instability, abnormal cell cycle, and aberrant signaling that predispose otherwise normal cells to become cancerous tumor cells or promote cancer progression and metastasis.