Viruses and Cancer

The overall focus of my research lab is to determine the mechanisms by which oncogenic viruses and other tumor microenvironmental stresses contribute to neoplasia by post-translational modification (PTM) of proteins. In particular, we have been studying (i) the virus-/stress-induced SUMOylation and phosphorylation of Histone Deacetylases to show how these modifications change the neoplastic program, primarily through altering the cancer epigenome; (ii) how oncoviral proteins regulate cellular post-translational modification pathways and provide new critical signals in viral-induced carcinogenesis.

Over the last ten years we have been using head and neck cancer as a model system because one category of these tumors has been shown to be etiologically driven by Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) and therefore HPV positive, while another one is not and is negative for HPV.  This provides an excellent avenue to compare the effects of cancer that is a driven by a virus vs. those in a cancer driven by other non-viral factors.

Most recently, we have developed a keen interest in biological as well as clinical sex/gender differences in head and neck cancers.