Our goal is to tackle difficult problems in human health and cancer biology. We work on the diseases of triple-negative breast cancer and other difficult-to-treat cancers.

Proper control of metabolism is required for essentially every basic biological process. Altered metabolism at the cellular level contributes to several serious diseases including inborn errors of metabolism (the result of inherited genetic defects in metabolic enzymes that lead to chemical imbalances in children) and cancer. Our laboratory seeks to characterize these metabolic disorders, understand how they compromise tissue function, develop methods to monitor metabolism in vivo and design therapies to restore normal metabolism and improve health.

Our lab is creating better experimental models that reveal how cancer cells metastasize and evade our immune system. We use these models to develop new drugs that engage our immune system to kill cancer cells.

• To understand how kidney cancer develops at the molecular level.
• To translate our findings into new treatments for kidney cancer patients.
• To train the next generation of physicians and scientists.

We are interested in the relationship between metabolism and cell type. We focus on the metabolism of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and their progeny including cells of the myeloid and T cell lineages.

The James Kim Lab examines the communication between epithelia and stroma through the lens of fundamental developmental pathways such as Hedgehog, Wnt, and Notch pathways.

The Whitehurst Lab uses RNAi-based functional genomics to identify gene products that support viability and/or modulate chemotherapeutic sensitivity in tumor cells. 

Zhong Lab studies studies inflammation, mitochondrial stress responses, tumor immunology and obesity-associated liver disorders.  

Dr. Cowell has built a research program focused on the development of bioinformatics and computational biology methods for studying the immune system and infectious diseases.  

Chung Lab uses primary human specimens, patient-derived xenograft models, and genetically engineered mouse models to study the molecular mechanisms underlying disease stem cell function in hematologic malignancies.