Faculty

Experimental Radiation Oncology Faculty

Junjie Chen, Ph.D. (Chairman)

Research Interests:

Molecular mechanisms of DNA damage response and repair pathways in genome maintenance and tumor suppression
Proteomic analysis of oncogenic and tumor suppressive pathways
Investigation of gene-gene and gene-drug interactions involved in cancer development and therapy

Boyi Gan, Ph.D.

Research Interests: Our lab studies the roles of nutrient sensing and energy metabolism in cancer. Our current efforts aim to study

The role of energy sensor AMPK and FoxO as well as their associated long non-coding RNAs (IncRNAs) in energy sensing and tumor metabolism
The crosstalk between cancer metabolism andepigenetics
The role of glutamate/cystine antiporter SLC7A11in the regulation of nutrient dependency and ferroptosis, a metabolic stress-induced non-apoptotic cell death

Khandan Keyomarsi, Ph.D.

Research Interests:

The role of cyclin E in breast and salivary tumorigenesis
Generating transgenic mice to determine the requirement of LMW cyclin E for tumor maintenance and recurrence
Identifying potential LMW-E/CDK2 substrates on a proteome-wide scale that could serve as targets for treatment of triple negative breast cancer
Identifying the salivary gland-specific cyclin E-associated kinase that drives cyclin E-induced salivary gland cancer

Lei Li, Ph.D.

Research Interests:

Molecular mechanisms of DNA damage repair and cell cycle checkpoint mechanisms
How DNA damage is sensed and transduced into checkpoint signals
Interaction of chromatin remodeling mechanisms with DNA repair and damage checkpoint pathways
Repair of DNA interstrand cross-links, as many chemotherapy agents are bifunctional DNA cross-linkers
Molecular mechanisms of Fanconi anemia

Li Ma, Ph.D.

Research Interests:

The overarching goal of my laboratory is to understand the molecular mechanisms of breast tumor progression and metastasis. Our major interest include regulatory RNAs and deubiquitinating enzymes. We have played a major role in establishing the current models of non-coding RNA regulation of epithelial-mesenchymal transition, metastasis, and therapy resistance. Moreover, we discovered the deubiquitinases for key cancer proteins; some of these deubiquitinases are promising therapeutic targets.

Pawel Mazur, Ph.D.

Research Interests:

Pancreatic and Lung Cancer - the leading causes of cancer death
Adoptive immunotherapy - CAR-T cell-based therapy development
Biochemistry - novel and "orphan" enzymes substrates discovery
Genetics - CRISPR/Cas9 animal models for cancer pharmacogenomic

Marvin L Meistrich, Ph.D.

Research Interests:

The effects of radiation and chemotherapy on male germ cells

Jae-il Park, Ph.D.

Research Interests:

Studying Wnt pathways in cancer cells, embryonic stem cells, frog embryogenesis, mouse intestine and skin
Regulation of telomerase in regeneration and disease

Helen Piwnica-Worms, Ph.D.

Research Interests:

Identifying and targeting drivers of breast cancer metastasis
Identifying and targeting vulnerabilities in treatment-refractory primary TNBC
Defining features that enable indolent breast cancer to advance to aggressive disease
Generating annotated collections of patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models of breast cancer for discovery science