Tag: Taiwan

Ovarian clear cell carcinoma (OCCC) presents a significant clinical challenge due to its high prevalence in East Asian populations and notorious resistance to chemotherapy. To break through these therapeutic bottlenecks, an interdisciplinary team from National Taiwan University (NTU) and NTU Hospital, led by Professor Ruby Yun-Ju Huang, recently published groundbreaking research in the prestigious journal Nature Communications. By integrating multi-platform spatial transcriptomics with advanced functional models, the team successfully created the world’s first “spatial atlas of OCCC”, precisely detailing how cancer cells adapt across various tumor microenvironments.

The study revealed that OCCC is not a homogeneous mass but exhibits immense spatial heterogeneity. Researchers discovered distinct differences in metabolism and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) between the tumor’s center and its periphery. Cancer cells at the core showed higher oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) and epithelial traits, which correlated with better patient prognoses driven by the LCN2 gene. Conversely, cells near invasive or necrotic edges displayed lower metabolic activity and higher EMT. The team further identified the SOX9-LCN2 axis as a crucial regulatory mechanism governing this cellular plasticity, proving that re-inducing SOX9 can restore epithelial functions and offering a promising target for precision treatments.

Beyond scientific breakthroughs, this milestone underscores NTU’s exceptional capacity for fostering inclusive, interdisciplinary talent. Co-first authored by international doctoral candidate Le Truong Thang and NTU medical graduate Dr. Yi-Te Wang, the collaboration seamlessly bridged smart medical technology with clinical expertise. By institutionalizing diverse academic partnerships across high-impact research platforms, NTU continues to leverage its capacity to address complex health challenges, paving the way for next-generation clinical solutions in global oncology.

As individuals make daily decisions, past experiences significantly influence their future choices. However, when the same action yields both positive and negative outcomes across different contexts, how does the brain integrate these conflicting signals? A research team led by Associate Professor Ming-Tsung Tseng at National Taiwan University’s Graduate Institute of Brain and Mind Sciences has recently uncovered the answer. Published in the prestigious journal PLOS Biology, their study reveals that past negative experiences tied to a specific choice increase exploratory behaviors, a mechanism directly regulated by the brain’s dopamine system.

While previous neuroscience research has typically examined reward and punishment learning independently, real-world decisions often involve accumulating mixed results. To address this, the NTU team designed a specialized learning task and combined it with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), computational modeling, and pharmacological validation. They discovered that previous punishment experiences prompt individuals to deviate from optimal, high-reward options in favor of exploring alternatives. Interestingly, this interaction is asymmetric; past reward experiences do not disrupt punishment learning in the same way. Further neuroimaging tests confirmed that blocking dopamine receptors eliminates this punishment-induced exploration, highlighting dopamine’s critical role in evaluating competing value signals within the prefrontal cortex.

This breakthrough not only maps the neural mechanisms behind complex human decision-making but also paves the way for clinical advancements. By decoding how the brain processes loss sensitivity under conflicting information, the findings provide a foundational framework for understanding learning and decision-making deficits in dopamine-related conditions, such as Parkinson’s disease, depression, and addiction. Supported by the National Science and Technology Council, NTU continues to leverage interdisciplinary research to unravel the complexities of the human brain, offering scalable insights for global health and medicine.

As extreme rainfall, heat waves, and droughts grow more frequent, the question of what keeps ecosystems from collapsing has moved from academic interest to policy urgency. Scientists have long known that biodiversity supports ecosystem function, but how it confers stability under severe environmental fluctuation has remained unresolved. Researchers at the Institute of Fisheries Science at National Taiwan University (NTU), working with Academia Sinica and international partners including Ryukoku University and Yokohama National University in Japan, have addressed the question through a pairing of long-term field observation and new theoretical modeling.

The first study drew on nine years of monitoring data from Taiwan’s Feitsui Reservoir, integrating 31 ecosystem functions related to the carbon cycle to assess how biodiversity shapes ecosystem multifunctionality. Microbial diversity was found to enhance ecosystem function consistently across multiple timescales—through typhoons, seasonal shifts, and interannual environmental change—whereas environmental variables such as rainfall, temperature, and nutrients influenced function only at particular timescales, identifying biodiversity as the more persistent driver. The second study built a theoretical model that departs from the conventional treatment of biodiversity as a fixed background condition, instead framing it as an ecological variable that changes dynamically over time. The model revealed a resource-diversity feedback linking species diversity with nutrients and food web structure, through which dynamic regulation of diversity alters nutrient use efficiency and predation, lowering the risk of ecosystem collapse. The team then validated the framework against 30 years of phytoplankton monitoring data from Lake Inba in Japan, confirming that both the average level of species diversity and its variation over time causally affect ecosystem stability.

The two studies are complementary: one demonstrates empirically that biodiversity sustains aquatic ecosystem function over the long term, while the other explains the mechanism by which it does so. The central insight—that stability depends not simply on how much biodiversity an ecosystem holds but on its capacity for dynamic self-regulation—provides a new theoretical foundation for conservation policy and reinforces biodiversity protection as a key lever for ecological resilience amid global environmental change. The first study appeared in Ecology Letters in 2025 with postdoctoral researcher Wan-Hsuan Cheng as lead author; the second was published in Ecology in 2026 with Assistant Professor Chun-Wei Chang as lead author.

Understanding how quickly ice sheets can collapse is among the most urgent questions in climate science—and the geological past offers the only real-world test cases. An international research team led by Professor Chuan-Chou Shen of the Department of Geosciences at National Taiwan University (NTU) has now reconstructed the mechanism behind the most extreme warming and sea level rise event of the past million years. Published in Nature Communications in June 2026 and selected by editors as a Featured Article, the study shows that the weakening and subsequent recovery of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) drove a large-scale redistribution of heat within the ocean, triggering rapid ice shelf melting and abrupt sea level rise.

The team focused on Termination IV, a deglaciation roughly 340,000 years ago during which sea levels rose by as much as five meters per century—orders of magnitude faster than today’s rate of a few millimeters per year. Previous research had struggled to establish causality because marine sediment records lacked precise absolute dating. Beginning in 2012, the team conducted repeated fieldwork at Bàsura Cave in northern Italy, drilling flowstone cores and applying high-precision uranium-thorium dating at NTU’s HISPEC laboratory to build an independently dated hydroclimate record of the European westerlies. Integrating this framework with North Atlantic sediment records allowed the first precise reconstruction of the sequence linking circulation change, ocean warming, and sea level rise. The team established a chronology for five termination events across 440,000 years, finding that AMOC weakened for approximately 13,000 years during Termination IV—the longest such interval on record—trapping enormous heat in the deep ocean before releasing it toward polar regions.

The implication is that oceans do not merely store heat passively but actively regulate ice sheet stability through circulation. Professor Shen notes that while conditions 340,000 years ago cannot be mapped directly onto the present, the finding matters because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are currently shrinking, and whether AMOC weakens or reorganizes will be decisive for future projections. Should deep ocean heat again be delivered rapidly beneath ice shelves, sea level rise may prove abrupt rather than gradual. Completed by more than 15 institutions across Asia and Europe, with core laboratory work and manuscript preparation led by NTU graduate Dr. Hsun-Ming Hu, the study offers a stronger scientific basis for coastal and low-lying regions planning climate adaptation.

Recognition from regional scholarly bodies offers one of the clearest measures of a university’s standing among its peers, and Asia’s magnetics community has just delivered such a verdict. At the Taiwan Magnetics Annual Conference held in Kinmen on July 21, 2026, the Asian Union of Magnetics Societies (AUMS) announced that its highest honor, the AUMS Award, would go to Professor Ching-Ray Chang, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Physics at National Taiwan University (NTU) and Chair Professor at Chung Yuan Christian University, jointly with Professor Yoshishige Suzuki of the Osaka Institute of Technology in Japan. Conference chair Professor Teruo Ono of Kyoto University presented the award and certificate in person.

Established in 2009, AUMS brings together the magnetics societies of Taiwan, Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Russia, and confers its flagship award every two years to honor Asian scholars whose work in magnetism, magnetic materials, and applications has achieved world-class significance. The award citation highlighted Professor Chang’s pioneering contributions across quantum computing, spintronics, nanotechnology, and quantum education, noting how his research integrates quantum information science, advanced materials, and quantum-inspired computing. It further credited his visionary leadership with advancing international collaboration and cultivating scientific talent throughout Asia, thereby strengthening the region’s strategic position within the global quantum technology landscape. Both laureates have been invited to deliver keynote addresses at the International Conference of AUMS (IcAUMS) in 2028.

The honor follows Professor Chang’s recent inclusion in the Quantum 100, a global list compiled in connection with the United Nations International Year of Quantum Science and Technology in 2025, underscoring the breadth of a career spanning fundamental physics, applied technology, and science education. NTU’s presence at the awards extended to the next generation as well: Dr. Danru Qu of the university’s Center for Condensed Matter Sciences was among the recipients of the AUMS Young Researcher Award, established to encourage emerging scholars. Taken together, the two awards point to sustained research capacity in spintronics at NTU and to a pipeline of talent connecting established leadership with early-career researchers—a combination increasingly central to how universities build durable influence in strategically important scientific fields.