Cancer Research

In biomedical sciences, Sándor Lovas, PhD, works to identify peptides to target molecules that may contribute to causes of smoking-related diseases. Lovas relies on computational chemistry to process his data, and recently received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) award to boost the computational power available to researchers across the university. In the lab of Laura Hansen, PhD, she and her team examine skin cancer at the molecular level. Hansen and Lovas are part of an interdisciplinary research team who have steadily been working on research related to LB595, a program funded by the state to examine cancer and smoking related diseases. Hansen has identified novel signifying molecules that might serve as targets for treating cancer.

In biomedical sciences, Sándor Lovas, PhD, works to identify peptides to target molecules that may contribute to causes of smoking-related diseases. Lovas relies on computational chemistry to process his data, and recently received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) award to boost the computational power available to researchers across the university. In the lab of Laura Hansen, PhD, she and her team examine skin cancer at the molecular level. Hansen and Lovas are part of an interdisciplinary team who have steadily been working on research related to LB595, a program funded by the state to examine cancer and smoking related diseases. Hansen has identified novel signifying molecules that might serve as targets for treating cancer.

In addition to working with Hansen, Lovas, and the rest of the LB595 group, Xian-Ming Chen, MD, in medical microbiology and immunology, focuses on breast and prostate cancer. His current work examines how to prevent infection in the compromised immune system of cancer patients. Also in medical microbiology and immunology, Patrick Swanson, PhD, studies leukemia and lymphoma at the DNA level.

Another member of this group, Yaping Tu, PhD, in the Department of Pharmacology, studies prostate cancer and breast cancer. Tu recently received an award from the National Institutes of Health to study factors behind the resistance of breast cancer cells to promising treatments.

Andrew E. Ekpenyong, PhD, and Michael Nichols, PhD, in the Department of Physics are examining how cancer drugs work at the cellular level and how such drugs could better combat metastasis, the spread of cancer from one part of the body to the other.