Affiliations and Collaborations
Sandra Orsulic, PhD
Director of Women’s Cancer Biology
Dr. Orsulic’s primary research interests include mouse models of gynecological cancers, the molecular characterization of ovarian cancer, and pathway-targeted therapy. Dr. Orsulic is a member of the Cancer Genome Atlas Project Ovarian Carcinoma Working Group, which investigates the underlying genetic changes that occur in human ovarian cancer. She also serves on the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.
Xiaojiang Cui, PhD
Dr. Cui’s lab conducts translational cancer research to decipher biochemical and signaling mechanisms of cancer metastasis and therapeutic resistance. He aims to use these mechanisms to identify potential targets for therapeutic interventions of the signaling pathways. The ultimate goal is to develop effective anticancer therapies based on these targets.
Ruprecht Wiedemeyer, PhD
Dr. Wiedemeyer’s research combines basic science and translational efforts toward elucidating molecular pathways that are involved in breast and ovarian cancer with an eye toward developing targeted therapies. His work focuses on tumor-specific genotypes that confer susceptibility or resistance to existing cancer therapies, utilizing bioinformatics, functional genetic screens, and array-based analyses, which are necessary for successful identification and characterization of cancer genes.
Qiang Wang, PhD
Dr. Wang’s lab studies the signals that control cell growth and division and how deregulation of these signals may contribute to the development of human cancers. Current areas of research include cell cycle regulation and aneuploidy, the mechanism of resistance to erbB targeted therapy, and biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis of breast and ovarian cancer.
Christine Walsh, MD, MS
Dr. Walsh's primary clinical and research interests include the molecular and genetic determinants of ovarian cancer behavior. Her research is focused on identifying novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of chemoresistant malignancies.
Jerome Rotter, MD, FACP, FACMG
Dr. Rotter is the Director of the Common Diseases Genetics Program, which seeks to identify the genes responsible for the common, chronic diseases that cause much of the morbidity and mortality in the developed world. Current emphasis is on cardiovascular/metabolic disease (atherosclerosis, lipid disorders, hypertension, diabetes, and insulin resistance), gastrointestinal/autoimmune disorders (the inflammatory bowel diseases – Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis), eye disease (keratoconus, diabetic retinopathy), and pharmacogenetics (genetic determinants of response to therapy, both efficacy and toxicity).
Lali Medina-Kauwe, PhD
Dr. Medina-Kauwe’s lab utilizes the cell binding, membrane penetration and intracellular trafficking functions of pathogen proteins to develop novel cell-targeted nanotherapeutics. Currently, the lab studies the cell entry processes of adenovirus (Ad) capsid proteins to guide the design and engineering of non-viral nanoparticles that mimic the high efficiency cell entry mechanism of the virus while avoiding the safety concerns associated with using whole viruses for therapy.
H. Phillip Koeffler, MD
Dr. Koeffler is Chair of the Division of Hematology/Oncology and a Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. The focus of the Koeffler lab is using cellular and molecular biology to study the cause of a variety of cancers and identify potential therapeutic targets. We use the latest technology including ChIP-Seq, SNP Chips, and ChIP-on-chip. The major cancer foci of research include hematopoietic malignancies, brain, lung, breast and pancreatic cancers, as well as, osteosarcomas.
Dolores DiVizio, MD, PhD
Dr. Di Vizio has recently demonstrated that breast cancer and other tumor cells, in response to certain cues, undergo a dramatic cellular transition to a tumor cell type that migrates faster, can radically deform its outer cell membrane, and sheds large, membrane-enclosed microvesicles with potent biological effects on other cells. These microvesicles contain regulatory molecules, including DNA and RNA, capable of promoting metastatic dissemination. A main focus in the Di Vizio lab is on the molecular characterization, by deep sequencing, of circulating large microvesicles in patients with ovarian and breast cancer.
