Faculty & Staff

George Calin, M.D., Ph.D.
Calin Laboratory
Professor and Chair ad interim

Menashe Bar-Eli, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor

• Tumor biology and immunity 
• Telomeres in cancer and aging 
• Genetically engineered mouse models of cancer and age-related disorders
• Target discovery for cancer and aging therapy  

Natividad Robert Fuentes, Ph.D.
Graduate School Faculty Profile | Fuentes Laboratory
Assistant Professor

• Membrane spatial dynamics and cellular signaling
  
• Cellular architecture of the tumor microenvironment
• Role of environmental factors (diet/exposure) in tumorigenesis
• Hypoxia and immunosuppression

• Functional genomics and the skin epithelia 
• The non-coding regulatory landscape of stem cell plasticity 
• Mechanistic understanding of squamous cell carcinomas and wound repair
• Molecular insights of aging 

Eyal Gottlieb, Ph.D.
Graduate School Faculty Profile | Gottlieb Laboratory
Professor
Vice President, Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

• Cancer metabolism, oxidative stress and DNA damage response
• Metabolic adaptions in cancer progression
  
• Metabolic control of fatty liver disease
  
• Metabolic vulnerabilities as novel cancer therapeutic targets
  

• Stem cells and glial biology in the central nervous system (CNS)
• Glioma and neurodegenerative diseases
• Demyelinating diseases, such as multiple sclerosis
• Chemotherapy-induced neurological defects

• Cancer biology and metastasis
• Tumor microenvironment
• Tissue injury and regeneration
• Biology of exosomes in health and disease

Kathleen McAndrews, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

• ECM and mesenchymal cell regulation in cancer progression and tissue regeneration
• Extracellular vesicles/exosomes as modulators of the tumor microenvironment and therapeutic delivery
• Stromal cell heterogeneity driving tumor growth, immune interactions and response to therapy

Luigi Perelli, M.D., Ph.D.
Graduate School Faculty Profile | Perelli Laboratory
CPRIT Scholar in Cancer Research
Assistant Professor

• Malignant transformation in sporadic and syndromic kidney cancer
• Genotype-phenotype interplay in cancer evolution
• Evolutionary mechanisms in glioblastoma
• Animal models and genome-tagging technologies for cancer research
  

• Molecular mechanisms of DNA replication fork stability 
• Genome instability gene functions in mitochondria
• Fanconi anemia and hereditary hematological malignancies
• BRCA/p53 collaborations at the DNA replication fork 

Shabnam Shalapour, Ph.D.
Graduate School Faculty Profile
Assistant Professor

• Chronic inflammation-induced immunosuppression
• B cells and humoral immunity
• Intrinsic MHC-1 antigen processing and presentation in cancer cells
• Regulation of adaptive immunity by obesity, alcohol, microbiome and aging

John A. Tainer, Ph.D.
Professor, Molecular and Cellular Oncology

James P. Allison, Ph.D.
Regental Professor,  Immunology