Washington University in St. Louis (WU)
The main research interest of my lab is to understand the relationship and signaling crosstalk between inflammation and cancer. Chronic inflammation is a major predisposing factor for many human cancers. Conversely, cancers are often referred to as “wounds that never heal” due to the pro-inflammatory nature of tumor cells which over time, create a fibrostromal milieu that supports tumor cell survival, promotes invasion, subverts host immunity and protects tumor cells against chemotherapeutics or radiation. Understanding the pro-inflammatory mechanism of tumor cells will facilitate development of therapeutics that can halt or even reverse this process to improve treatment outcome.