Simmons Faculty Member Labs

The Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center distinguished faculty are focused primarily on research related to cell stress and cancer nanomedicine. They all hold secondary appointments in other departments, including Biochemistry, Pharmacology, and Radiation Oncology. In addition, all faculty are members of the Cancer Center’s Scientific Programs, and participate fully in the inter- and trans-disciplinary research with other Cancer Center members.

These faculty are located in new laboratory space on ND2, otherwise known as the T. Boone Pickens Biomedical Research Building. For information on our faculty and their research, please go to their individual laboratory websites.

David Boothman, PhD, Robert B. and Virginia Payne Professorship in Oncology – Research in the laboratory of Dr. Boothman focuses on three areas: (1) DNA repair, including both DNA mismatch repair (MMR) and DNA double strand break repair (DSBR); (2) Noncaspase-dependent apoptotic responses, including those induced by a group of novel anti-tumor agents related to ß-lapachone; and (3) ionizing radiation (IR)-induced network signaling and altered gene expression and their roles in stress-induced replicative senescence, cell death/survival, and tumor progression, including epithelium-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) responses. These studies are being performed in colon (1-3), breast (1-3), brain (3), prostate (2), ovarian (1), and lung (2,3) cancers (#s indicate research areas in disease sites).

Cheng-Ming Chiang, PhD, Professor – We are primarily interested in understanding the mechanisms of transcriptional regulation in mammalian cells and in defining the roles of protein factors involved in these processes. We are also interested in the studies of human papillomaviruses, which cause a variety of human diseases, including benign genital warts and cervical cancer. Transcriptional regulation is an important step in modulating gene activity in eukaryotic cells. As the complexity evolves in the development of a multicellular organism, the machinery that transcribes an eukaryotic gene has also become very complicated. To uncover the general principles in transcribing eukaryotic genes, we have embarked on extensive biochemical purifications of protein factors and cofactors involved in human transcription.

Jinming Gao, PhD, Associate Professor - The Gao Lab focuses on the development of multi-functional nanomedicine platforms for cancer diagnosis and therapy. Macromolecular and nanoscale building blocks are synthesized and assembled to create highly integrated architectures with multiple functions for tumor targeting, imaging ultra-sensitivity, and controlled drug delivery. New molecular targets of cancer are exploited to achieve greater imaging specificity of molecular probes and higher therapeutic indices of drugs. The underlying theme of our research is to translate key advances in materials science and nanotechnology to cancer biology for the early detection and intervention of cancer.

Chin-Rang Yang, PhD, Assistant Professor -- The main focus of my research is in developing mathematical network model for understanding the process of cancer progression. The challenge of the disease network analysis is the complexity of the biological system: the signals from cell surface receptors to downstream molecules within a cancer cell can elicit multiple activities that branch outward through numerous pathways and many of which interconnect synergistically and regulate each other. My laboratory is combining high-throughput genomic and proteomic technologies and computing power together to deal with the thousands of data points needed to understand these pathways. We believe biological network research is the beginning to identify the signalomic fluxes underlying disease that drive cell growth and regulation and raise the probability of discovering potential targets for treating refractory disease.