Associate Professor
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
I am Associate Professor of Genomic Medicine and Scientific Director of MDACC Epigenomics Therapy Initiative (METI) at MD Anderson Cancer Center. My research is focused on understanding aberrations in cancer epigenome and identifying new therapies and biomarkers. Over last 20 years, I have developed expertise in studying epigenetic processes by identifying factors that perform epigenetic functions, identifying their roles in cellular events that regulate normal organ development and abnormal cell growth during tumorigenesis. The highlights of my current research include comprehensive understanding of chromatin state reprogramming during immunotherapy response, melanoma progression (Cell Reports 2017 and 2021), colon cancer progression (Gut 2021), head and neck cancer and rare diseases including DSRCT (Nature Communications, 2022), liposarcoma (JCI 2015 ), MPNST (Acta Neuropathologica 2021). We also identified major epigenetic drivers of in melanoma (Cancer Discovery 2015 and Cell Reports 2019), breast cancer (Nature Communications 2019) and lung cancer (Cancer Cell 2020). Importantly, we have made significant contribution in the mechanistic biology and therapeutic opportunities in KMT2D-mutant cancers (Cancer Cell, 2020, Cell Reports 2020, Nature Communications 2018 and biorxiv 2021). I defined a DNA-repair mediated DNA demethylation process (Cell 2008), and discovered its role in colon cancer initiation (Cell 2010). My PhD work deciphered roles of DNA and histone methyltransferases in embryonic development (MCB 2006, G&D 2007 and JBC 2010). We have systematically generated chromatin state maps (>3000 ChIP-Seq datasets) into 9 solid tumor types. These data have led to the discovery of several new concepts including a strategy to stratify patients based on their epigenomic content for specific therapies. We are also heavily invested in the single cell epigenomics (PNAS, 2021 and Nature Communications 2021). My lab is supported by NCI, CPRIT, ACS, private foundations (MRA and MRF), and MDA. I am also leading Epigenetics SPORE for MDA.
