[ChBE-Grad] UH ChBE Seminar this Friday, Sept 6

[Solano, Nicolette]

[William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Seminar Series]<https://www.chee.uh.edu>


Systems Biology Approaches for Predicting Cancer Cell Behaviors and Rationally Designing Therapeutic Interventions


Matthew J. Lazzara, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemical Engineering & Biomedical Engineering
University of Virginia

Friday, Sept 6 2024 | 10:30a Central
Engineering room L2D2

LECTURE ABSTRACT
The design of effective combination therapies for cancer depends on identifying the druggable signaling pathways that transformed cells use to make phenotypic decisions. Finding these pathways is challenging because signaling information is high-dimensional and because cancer cells exhibit substantial cell-to-cell variability and phenotypic plasticity in the heterogeneous tumor microenvironment. Overcoming these barriers requires the careful integration of appropriate computational models with experimental data that describe the complexity of tumor biology at multiple scales. This talk will focus on our integration of data science with mechanistic modeling approaches to understand how pancreas cancer cells make decisions leading to chemoresistance in response to diverse cues in the tumor microenvironment. Models are trained on biochemical measurements and high-content imaging that capture the dynamics and heterogeneity of the multivariate signaling processes leading to cell phenotype determination. Model predictions are tested in mouse models and cell culture experiments and are further validated through the analysis of human patient data. Our results nominate specific candidate drug combinations as potentially more effective pancreas cancer treatments and demonstrate how cancer systems biology approaches can be successfully deployed for the effective design of preclinical and clinical studies.



SPEAKER BIOSKETCH
Dr. Matthew Lazzara is Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia, UVA Shannon Center Mid-Career Faculty Fellow, Co-Director of the UVA Cancer Systems Biology U54 Center, and a member of the UVA Comprehensive Cancer Center. He received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering with highest honors from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He remained at MIT for postdoctoral studies in Biological Engineering and was the recipient of an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellowship. Work in the Lazzara Lab employs integrated experimental and computational methods to study cancer cell signaling and has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and American Cancer Society. Projects focus on the rational, model-driven identification of combination therapies for cancer and on fundamental studies of the spatiotemporal regulation of cell signaling by phosphatases and receptor trafficking. Dr. Lazzara is the prior recipient of the American Cancer Society Research Scholar Grant and several teaching awards, including the S. Reid Warren, Jr. Award and the Outstanding Faculty Award of the AIChE Delaware Valley. He is a standing member of the NIH Tumor Evolution, Heterogeneity and Metastasis study section, editorial board member of Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering and Frontiers in Systems Biology, and recent co-chair of the NCI Cancer Systems Biology Consortium steering committee.



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[William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering]<https://www.chee.uh.edu>

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