The Radiation and Cancer Biology Division in the Department of Radiation Oncology of the University of Michigan was established in 1995. Overall goals of this division are to understand the mechanism of cellular response to radiation and to identify and target the molecules and signaling pathways that are responsible to radioresistance in human cancer. The ultimate goal is to improve current radiation therapy alone and in combination with chemotherapy for the treatment of cancer patients.
The projects undertaken by Faculty range from early target identification, to mechanistic study of signaling molecules, and to application of laboratory knowledge in clinic radiotherapy. Many state-of-art technologies are being used, including nanotechnology, transgenic and knockout mice, high throughput screening of siRNA library, and functional imaging.
- Michael Green, MD, PhD: Defining and harnessing the determinants of inflammation which shape anti-tumoral immunity and influence cancer therapy efficacy. In particular, we focus on understanding the molecular, metabolic, and cellular checkpoints which alter CD8+ T effector cell trafficking and function in the tumor microenvironment.
- Ted Lawrence, MD, PhD: Combining chemoradiation with molecularly targeted therapy; Preclinical studies in the treatment of hepatocellular cancer.
- Mats Ljungman, PhD: Understanding the cellular responses to DNA-damaging agents and stress-induced gene expression with identification of molecular targets for novel cancer treatments.
- Meredith Morgan, PhD: Combination of novel molecularly targeted agents with chemoradiation to improve therapy for pancreatic carcinoma.
- Mukesh Nyati, PhD: Understanding the key signaling events predictive of response to EGFR inhibition and investigating optimum schedules for combination of molecularly targeted drugs with chemo- and radiotherapy.
- Dipankar Ray, PhD: Understanding the molecular alterations during radiation-induced lung toxicity and identifying new therapeutic targets for thoracic cancers.
- Paramita Ray, PhD:
- Mingjia Tan, PhD:
- Daniel Wahl, MD, PhD: Understanding how abnormal metabolism confers radiation resistance in glioblastoma and using drug-radiation combinations to overcome this resistance.
- Experimental Irradiation Core