Damon Runyon Researchers

An emerging hallmark of cancer is phenotypic plasticity, which enables cancer cells to change their traits throughout tumorigenesis and in response to targeted therapy treatment. While new targeted therapies are emerging for the treatment of lung cancers, it has been demonstrated that lung tumors with heterogeneous cell populations are especially resistant to current treatments. One reason that lung cancer cells with the same cancer-causing mutation but different cellular identities may have differential sensitivities to targeted therapies is altered gene expression. Dr. Ghazi aims to characterize how these hybrid lung tumors are innately resistant to treatment by determining differences in gene expression and regulation. She is engineering a novel mouse model that reports the cellular identity of lung tumors in live animals. Together these efforts aim to improve our ability to treat particularly aggressive lung tumors. Dr. Ghazi received her PhD and MS from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, and her BS from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.