COBRE Members

Principal Investigator

Kenneth D. Tew, Ph.D., DSc
Chair & Professor
Cell and Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics
John C. West Chair in Cancer Research

Investigators

Lalima G. Ahuja, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Cell and Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics
Protein-Phosphorylation based Signaling

Peggi Angel, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Cell and Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics
Systems-based analysis of redox activity in aortic valve stenosis

Seok-hyung Kim, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
College of Medicine
Mitochondrial Disease Associated Mutations as novel Genetic Risk Factors to Develop Advanced Fatty Liver Disease

Gavin Wang, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Targeting Cancer Stem Cells for Breast Cancer Treatment

Haizhen Wang, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Cell and Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics
Targeting CDK6 for T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) therapy

Pilot Projects

Kyu-Ho Lee, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Pediatrics
The novel iron sulfur-targeting protein Ccdc117 plays a regulatory role in bioenergetics metabolism

Shikhar Mehrotra, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Surgery
Factors that shape T cell immune response

Jessica Thaxton, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Orthopaedics and Physical Medicine
PERK deficient T cells possess substantial spare respiratory capacity and control tumor growth relative to controls

Core Directors

Danyelle Townsend, Ph.D.
Director
Analytical Redox Biology Core

John Lemasters, Ph.D.
Director
Cell and Molecular Imaging Core

Lauren Ball, Ph.D.
Director
Proteomics CorePilot Projects

Mentors

Richard R. Drake, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor
Cell and Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics

Scott T. Eblen, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Cell and Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics

Anand Mehta, DPhil
Professor
Cell and Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics

Kenneth D. Tew, Ph.D., DSc
Chair & Professor
Cell and Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics
John C. West Chair in Cancer Research

Danyelle Townsend, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Drug Discovery and Biomedical Sciences

Administrative Staff

Deza Finn
Administrative Manager

Thomas Kolette
Administrative Coordinator

Carly Lauer
Grants Coordinator

Caitlin Myers Hernandez
Administrative Coordinator

Graduates

Sherine Chan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Drug Discovery and Biomedical Sciences

James Chou, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Drug Discovery and Biomedical Sciences
Awarded RO1: Novel lysine deacetylase 6 Hsp domain inhibitors against AML (1R01CA163452-01A1)

Eduardo Maldonado, DVM, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Drug Discovery and Biomedical Sciences
Awarded RO1: VDAC Opening Small Molecules to Revert Warburg Metabolism and Induce Oxidative Stress

Mariana Pehar, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Cell and Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics
Awarded R01: NGF and RAGE-p75NTR signaling in models of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Danyelle Townsend, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Drug Discovery and Biomedical Sciences

Joachim Uys, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Cell and Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics
Awarded R01: GSTP-Mediated Redox Protein Signaling and Binge-line Ethanol Drinking

Marcelo Vargas, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Cell and Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics
Awarded RO1: NAD metabolism and mitochondrial dysfunction in ALS models (R01NS089640)