Ken
Ken has a long-standing interest in structural biology and structure-guided drug design. This started at Brigham Young University, while studying cyclooxygenase inhibitors in the lab of Dan Simmons. At Stanford University, he studied transcription in the lab of Roger Kornberg. He completed residency training in the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program. During that time also worked in the laboratory of Nathanael Gray. In addition to scientific work, Ken is a practicing thoracic radiation oncologist.
George
George received his Ph.D. in health sciences in 2013 from RMIT in Melbourne, Australia. He joined the Westover Lab in 2016 as a postdoctoral fellow where he worked on the structure of KRAS complexes on the cell membranes, including studies of cancer-causing KRAS mutants such as KRAS Q61H that alter the structure of those complexes. He continues now as an instructor leading efforts to understand the structure and functional differences between RAS isoforms and specific mutants.
Ammar
Ammar received his Ph.D. in bioinformatics and genetics in 2021 from Kadir Has University in Turkey, where he worked on in-silico discovery of selective class IIa HDACs inhibitors. He joined the Westover Lab in 2021 as a postdoctoral researcher where he works on designing selective kinase inhibitors and associated biomarkers for patient selection using computational approaches and bioinformatics.
Dhiraj
Dhiraj received his Ph.D. in biophysics in 2017 from the University of South Bohemia, Czech Republic, and gained four years of post-Ph.D. work experience in bioinformatics prior to joining the Westover Lab. He joined the Westover Lab in January 2022 as a postdoc researcher where he is applying computer simulation methods to study the structure, function, and dynamics of cancer targets such as RAS and kinases, with a special emphasis on drug resistance. He is interested in homology modeling, docking simulations and virtual screening, molecular dynamics simulations, replica-exchange molecular dynamics, binding free-energy prediction, and free-energy perturbation calculations.
Deekshi
Deekshi obtained her Ph.D. in 2019 from the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar in India, where she worked on the molecular biology and protein-protein interaction of membrane-bound proteins in the Alzheimer’s disease pathway. In 2020, she joined the Department of Biochemistry, Indian Institute of Science, India, as a research associate and worked there for two years. In May 2022, she joined the Westover Lab as a Fulbright-Nehru postdoctoral fellow. Her work is designed based on structural, biochemical, and inhibitor-specific studies unique to G13-mutated KRAS protein that may have significant implications in the future for KRAS-mutated colorectal cancer patients.
Ashari
Ashari received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Brigham Young University, Utah, where she studied autophagy signaling, protein-protein interactions, and vesicle trafficking pathways. She joined the Westover Lab in June 2023 as a postdoctoral fellow where she works on molecular signaling of SRMS in autophagy and small molecular drug discovery for SRMS.
Xingxiao (Shelly)
Shelly received her M.S. in cell biology from Guangdong Cardiovascular Institute in China. She joined the Westover Lab in 2017 and is focused on the development of cellular models of cancer. Shelly is our lab manager.
Jane
Jane received her B.S. in biological sciences in 1987 from Stanford University. She joined the Westover Lab in 2021 and is focused on kinase drug discovery and studies that highlight unique and targetable properties of oncogenic forms of Ras.
Sandra
Sandra earned her B.S. in biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin, followed by her M.D. at UT Southwestern Medical Center in 2018. She completed her pediatrics training at the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor before returning to UT Southwestern for additional fellowship training in Pediatric Hematology and Oncology where she continues to see patients. She joined the Westover Lab in 2023 and is focused on targeting a resistant FGFR1 mutation found in pediatric cancers.
Ashley
Ashley received her B.S. in biochemistry in 2017 from the University of Texas at Austin. She joined the Westover Lab as an M.D./Ph.D. student in 2023 and is focused on designing selective kinase inhibitors.
Abeeb
Abeeb earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology in 2023 from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), where his research centered on protease-substrate engineering and structural biology. He also brings expertise in computer-aided drug discovery. Joining the Westover lab as a postdoctoral researcher in July 2023, Abeeb's interest lies in developing assays and designing targeted drugs for cancer drivers, with a particular focus on VRK1. Additionally, he leverages his knowledge to computationally design and optimize kinase substrates using protein design and structure prediction methods.
Yu-An
Yu-An received his Ph.D. in biomedical studies cancer molecular biology and therapy) in 1997 from Baylor University. He has been with UT Southwestern Medical Center research labs since 2009 and joined the Westover Lab in 2022. He is focused on the experimental works of biomarker discovery in MAP kinase pathway in RASopathies syndromes.