Chakravarti Lab

Research Summary

The Chakravarti Lab is comprised of multiple faculty members and has a primary focus of investigating the molecular, genetic and epigenetic mechanisms of treatment resistance in human tumors and developing strategies to circumvent this resistance in the clinic. A major focus of the group is on signal transduction pathways, specifically the PI3K/AKT pathway, in glioblastoma and prostate cancer. Arnab Chakravarti, MD, is an internationally recognized cancer researcher and has received continuous federal funding since 1999 to support his research activities. He currently serves as Chair of the RTOG Brain Tumor Translational Research Group and Co-Chair of the clinical RTOG Brain Tumor Committee. Further, he is the United States delegate on the EORTC Brain Tumor Steering Committee. Dr. Chakravarti is a standing member of the NIH Cancer Biomarkers Study Section (CBSS) and serves on NIH PO1 and SPORE review panels, respectively. He has served on national panels that have determined future directions and indications of various targeted therapies. For his accomplishments, Dr. Chakravarti has been recognized as a Fellow of the American College of Radiation Oncology.

The Chakravarti Lab has uncovered novel therapeutic targets in various tumors such as human gliomas that have led to important international clinical studies investigating novel targeted therapy agents. Further, Dr. Chakravarti’s team has identified novel prognostic and predictive biomarkers in various cancers that has led to revised molecular-based classification schemes for certain tumors such as human glioblastomas (GBMs). They are currently conducting high-throughput molecular, genetic and epigenetic profiling of brain tumors, prostate cancer, bladder cancer and melanomas. The correlative approach is genome-wide, including techniques such as SNP, miRNA and global methylation analyses, to identify novel molecular prognostic and predictive biomarkers. Additional research topics include glioma stem cells, DNA repair pathways, tumor microenvironment and cell metabolism. Other disease sites also include melanoma, bladder, gastrointestinal and lung cancer.

Members