A native of Hang Zhou, China, Alfred came to Singapore in 1997 and completed his high school before taking up the A*STAR NSS-PhD scholarship. He obtained B.S. from Duke University and Ph.D from Stanford University (Supervisor: Dr. Gerald Crabtree). He then returned to Singapore and joined Prof. Bing Lim’s and later Prof. Ng Huck-Hui’s lab as a postdoc. Prior to starting his own lab in Duke-NUS, Alfred was a junior PI in the National Neuroscience Institute.
‘All Models are wrong, but some are useful.’
The Sun lab is building innovative human neural models to understand how human nervous system develop, mature, and age; and how dysfunction in these processes lead to various neurological disorders. A major focus of the lab now is neurodegeneration, particularly Parkinson disease. Another focus of the lab is to construct synthetic or artificial cells that are programmed with specific neuronal activities. Functional assembly and integration of such cells may serve as useful models for dissecting disease mechanisms as well as fueling translational discoveries.
Jo J, Yang L, Tran HD, Yu W, Sun AX, Chang YY, Jung BC, Lee SJ, Saw TY, Xiao B, Khoo ATT, Yaw LP, Xie JJ, Lokman H, Ong WY, Lim GGY, Lim KL, Tan EK, Ng HH, Je HS. Lewy-body like inclusions in human midbrain organoid carrying glucocerebrosidase and alpha synuclein mutations. Annals of neurololgy. Volume: 90 Issue: 3 Page: 490-505
Sun AX, Yuan Q, Fukuda M, Yu W, Yan H, Lim GGY, Nai MH, D'Agostino GA, Tran HD, Itahana Y, Wang D, Lokman H, Itahana K, Lim SWL, Tang J, Chang YY, Zhang M, Cook SA, Rackham OJL, Lim CT, Tan EK, Ng HH, Lim KL, Jiang YH, Je HS(2019): Potassium channel dysfunction in human neuronal models of Angelman syndrome. Science, 366(6472):1486-1492. PMID: 31857479 (co-first and co-corresponding author)
Sun AX, Yuan Q, Tan S, Xiao Y, Wang D, Khoo AT, Sani L, Tran HD, Kim P, Chiew YS, Lee KJ, Yen YC, Ng HH, Lim B, Je HS (2016): Direct induction and functional maturation of forebrain GABAergic neurons from human pluripotent stem cells. Cell Reports, 16(7): 1942-53. PMID: 27498872 (co-first and co-corresponding author)
Jo J, Xiao Y, Sun AX, Cukuroglu E, Tran HD, Göke J, Tan ZY, Saw TY, Tan CP, Lokman H, Lee Y, Kim D, Ko HS, Kim SO, Park JH, Cho NJ, Hyde TM, Kleinman JE, Shin JH, Weinberger DR, Tan EK, Je HS, Ng HH (2016): Midbrain-like organoids from human pluripotent stem cells contain functional dopaminergic and neuromelanin-producing neurons. Cell Stem Cell, 19(2):248-257. PMCID: PMC5510242
Yoo AS, Sun AX, Li L, Shcheglovitov A, Portmann T, Li Y, Lee-Messer C, Dolmetsch RE, Tsien RW, Crabtree GR(2011): MicroRNA-mediated conversion of human fibroblasts to neurons. Nature, 476(7359):228-31. PMCID: PMC3348862 (co-first author)
For full publication list, please refer to google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=WWuakUIAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate