Retired Faculty
Professor Emerita; Associate Dean for Medical Student Research; Course Director, Cancer Biology
Department: Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Research Interests: Cellular response to DNA damage, regulation of gene expression, cellular proliferation and the cell cycle
Professor
Department: Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Research Interests: Medical and graduate student education; previous research focused on structure-based drug design studies for development of immune-regulatory compounds
Marilyn Jorns, PhD
Professor Emerita
Department: Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Research Interests: Use of structure-based drug design to develop a new class of drugs to treat heart failure, based on modulation of the gasotransmitter hydrogen sulfide; structure and mechanism of membrane-bound oxidoreductases
Gerald Soslau, PhD
Professor Emeritus
Department: Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Research Interests: Platelet biochemistry/molecular biology and hemostasis
Joint Faculty Appointments
Department: Chemical and Biological Engineering
Research Interests: Molecular simulations in biophysics and materials, HIV-1 envelope structure and function, protein-ligand binding thermodynamics and kinetics
Department: Physics
Research Interests: Computational studies of confinement effects on the folding of amyloidogenic proteins, spatial correlations of neurons in the brain, firing dynamics of neuronal networks, fluid flow through porous media
Department: Physics
Research Interests: Experimental and theoretical protein dynamics, kinetics of biological self-assembly, including sickle cell and Alzheimer's disease, sickle cell testing and diagnostic devices
Department: Biology
Research Interests: Identifying and characterizing genes involved in pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), aiming to identify novel therapeutic strategies to delay or prevent onset of AD
Department: Physics
Research Interests: Computational and experimental biophysics of protein folding and assembly, relevant to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease; discrete molecular dynamics of coarse-grained protein and lipid models
Research Interests: We investigate mitochondrial physiology, metabolism, and signaling in malaria parasites with a view to discover new drugs and to understand drug resistance.
Research Interests: Ligand-gated ion channels; structure-function relationships; molecular modeling; ligand-receptor interactions
Adjunct Biochemistry Faculty
Gordon J. Lutz, PhD
Research Interests: Our major research focus is to develop novel splice modulating oligomers (SMOs) as drugs to treat various serious neurological diseases, neuromuscular/muscular disorders and cancer.
Email: glutz@drexelmed.edu
Yulia Nefedova, PhD*
Adjunct Associate Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Joseph Nickels, PhD
Adjunct Associate Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
PhD (1993) Microbiology & Immunogenetics, University of Medicine and Dentistry, New Jersey (UMDNJ)
Research Interests: Our laboratory has a basic research focus in two different areas. The first area is aimed at understanding the signals that are used in controlling the cell cycle. Under normal circumstances, the cell cycle is carefully controlled to ensure that cells replicate at the "right time." A loss of appropriate cell cycle signaling can result in uncontrolled growth, which often manifests itself as a form of cancer. The other focus of our laboratory is directed at an understanding of the checks and balances governing sterol synthesis. Sterol synthesis is one of the major therapeutic targets in the control of heart disease. Both of these research projects involve extremely complicated regulatory signals. To aid in our basic understanding, we have adopted the yeast system as a means of addressing our experimental questions.
Phone: 609.570.1046
Email: jnickels@mdlab.com
Kavitha Sarma, PhD
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Adjunct Biochemistry Faculty at Fox Chase Cancer Center
Visit Fox Chase Cancer Center
Research Interests: Genetic studies to improve screening, early detection and treatment of cancers; mechanisms underlying genetically undefined hereditary cancers; predictive biomarkers for response to chemoradiation therapy; novel strategies to screen for individuals at high risk for cancer
Research Interests: DNA repair of mismatched bases and the cellular response to DNA damage. Identification of early genetic alterations in tumorigenesis.
Research Interests: Understanding how the Ras family of small GTPases alters tumor progression and metastasis, specifically in pancreatic ductal cancer. We have interests in mechanisms and consequences of Ras-driven intracellular signaling within the epithelial cancer cell, as well as how Ras activation educates and modifies crosstalk throughout the tumor microenvironment.
Research Interests: Signal transduction by small G proteins and their effectors and the role of these proteins in regulating cytoskeletal structure, tumor invasion, and metastasis; regulation of insulin signaling.
Research Interests: Goal of our research is to discover ways to improve the treatment of epithelial ovarian cancer.
Research Interests: Tumor microenvironment and tumor-stroma interactions; a primary fibroblast-derived and in vivo-like 3D system that mimics stroma progression is used to investigate both the mechanisms of matrix induced myofibroblastic differentiation (e.g., desmoplastic activation) and the tumor-associated matrix induced permissiveness that promotes tumorigenesis and cell invasion. The stroma progressive 3D system also serves as basis for a platform investigating tumor-associated matrix induced drug responsiveness.
Research Interests: Computational structural biology, including homology modeling, fold recognition, molecular dynamics simulations, statistical analysis of the PDB and bioinformatics.
Research Interests: Research in my group focuses on the tissue and cellular dynamics during aging, chronic tissue damage and continuous regeneration leading to the development of cancer.
Research Interests: Understanding points of communication between the cell cycle machinery and cell shape controls, with particular reference to how these processes are simultaneously disrupted in cancer; the HEF1, HEI10, and HEI-C proteins, which function in cell cycle-cell attachment control pathways.
Research Interests: Protein structure-function relationships, the role of quaternary structure dynamics in allosteric regulation and drug action.
Research Interests: The Johnson laboratory studies mechanisms of DNA damage detection, repair, and signaling that occur in BRCA1 mutation-containing organisms and cancers. We use a range of approaches, including cell biology, mouse genetics, and therapy resistance modeling, to understand basic biological processes and their implications for tumorigenesis and chemotherapy sensitivity.
Research Interests: The goal of the Karanicolas laboratory is to develop structure-based approaches for modulating protein function using small-molecules. We apply these new approaches to re-activate disabled tumor suppressors, inhibit cancer-driving RNA-binding proteins, disable key oncogenic kinases, and tune the activity of antibodies used in cancer immunotherapy.
Research Interests: The role of dysregulated methionine metabolism and human diseases; correction of mutant protein function by chaperone therapy; mouse models of human disease.
Research Interests: Understanding mechanisms of drug resistance in gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST); preclinical testing of novel agents/combinations in GIST patient derived xenografts (PDX); identification of biomarkers of response to targeted agents in soft tissue sarcomas
Research Interests: Immune regulatory pathways in human lymphoid malignancies. We are interested in the immune signaling pathways, particularly key transcriptional factors and ubiquitin-mediated signaling, required for lymphoma pathogenesis and immunotherapy. We have established an unbiased high-throughput CRISPR library screening technology to rapidly and accurately identify key pathways that are suitable for targeted therapy and immunotherapy.
Research Interests: Our laboratory is broadly interested in mechanisms that regulate genome stability and how these processes are disrupted in cancer cells. We are studying centromere and kinetochore function to understand the molecular defect that causes aneuploidy in cancer cells. We are also studying mechanisms in cancer cells that promote their survival in response to chemotherapy. The goal of our studies is to develop new strategies to enhance response of cancer cells to chemotherapy.
Adjunct Biochemistry Faculty at the Wistar Institute
Research Interests: The lab is interested in how genomic regulatory sequences, termed enhancers, work to determine cell identity and specify blood lineages, such as monocytes/macrophages and granulocytes, from hematopoietic stem cells.
Research Interests: Dr. Schug is interested in investigating metabolic adaptation in cancer cells through the use of cell biology, biochemistry, and metabolomics.
* Physician's practice is independent of Drexel University.
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