Peter Grace, Ph.D.  is the Chair Ad-Interim of the Symptom Research Department. Grace obtained his PhD at the University of Adelaide, Australia and joined the faculty as a tenure-track assistant professor in 2016. The goal of his research laboratory is to understand the neuroimmune mechanisms of chronic pain and its control. His current work is investigating the adaptive immune mechanisms that initiate and maintain neuropathic pain after traumatic nerve injury. His team is also delineating the analgesic mechanisms and therapeutic potential of the ‘master regulator’ of the antioxidant response Nrf2. He has shown that the Nrf2 activator dimethyl fumarate relieves neuropathic pain, with ongoing work to advance this drug class for clinical treatment of chronic pain.

Christopher J. Sidey-Gibbons, Ph.D. serves as Deputy Chair of the Symptom Research Department. He is an Associate Professor and leads the MD Anderson INSPiRED Cancer Care initiative (Innovative Solutions for Patient-Reported Data): an international collaboration between academics and clinicians focused on making
patient-centered data easier to use and more useful for clinical practice and
research.

Prior to joining MD Anderson, Dr. Sidey-Gibbons was Co-Director of the Patient-Reported Outcomes, Value, and Experience Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Prior to that, he was Director of Health Assessment and Innovation at The University of Cambridge Psychometrics Center and a Research Associate at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Dr. Sidey-Gibbons' work is broadly focused on improving cancer care by generating and communicating insights from patient data. Within this broad field, his work and the work of INSPiRED, focuses on the development and evaluation of novel tools to asses, analyze and predict patient outcomes using modern psychometrics and machine learning techniques

Robert Dantzer, DVM, Ph.D. founded the Neuroimmunology Laboratory as a new basic science lab within the Department of Symptom Research along with Drs. Annemieke Kavelaars and Cobi Heijnen. Dr. Dantzer has always been intrigued by the distinction between physiology (the normal) and pathology (the abnormal) and the theories that account for transitioning from one state to the other in medicine. In 1967, he joined the newly established Laboratory of Veterinary Pharmacology in Toulouse, France, where he developed medical interventions for prevention and treatment of stress in farm animals. This work motivated his scientific investment in the psychobiology of stress and the field of psychoneuroimmunology, still-nascent disciplines in the 1960s.

Tito Mendoza, Ph.D., MS, MEd. applies his statistical expertise to the design, analysis, and interpretation of studies with PROs. An integral aspect of his research is the application of advanced statistical models in understanding symptom outcomes. He is interested in determining how PROs can be use to define and develop responder-type analyses. Currently, he is investigating the symptom burden of patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitor combined with other cancer therapies.

Xin Shelley Wang, MD, MPH contributes to international clinical research and education on symptom science, which investigates patient-reported symptoms and their impact on functional status and quality of life. Her work has provided a comparison of cross-cultural, cross-national similarities and differences in symptom reporting.Dr. Wang received her medical degree in China and practiced oncology there for 10 years. She has published more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals, some in high-impact journals.

Andrew Shepherd, Ph.D. engages in pre-clinical research to elucidate the mechanisms that link inflammation to pain induced by various forms of injury, including joint damage and chemotherapy-induced neuropathy, with a particular focus on signaling related to the renin-angiotensin system. The ultimate goal of this research is to identify interventions that can mitigate or prevent the development of pain associated with these chronic disease states.

Goldy George, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor within the Department of Symptom Research, Division of Internal Medicine.

Yuan Pan, is an Assistant Professor within the Department of Symptom Research, Division of Internal Medicine.