The Ringel Lab at the OSUCCC – James, led by internationally recognized thyroid cancer expert and Principal Investigator Matthew D. Ringel, MD, is dedicated to studying mechanisms of cancer invasion, metastatic progression, and therapeutic resistance in thyroid cancer.
One of the most active thyroid cancer laboratories in the country, the Ringel Lab experts focus on translational discoveries designed to enhance clinical thyroid cancer care through basic science. He has ongoing collaborations with investigators in the OSU Colleges of Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, and Engineering studying mechanisms by which cancer invade and metastasize. The Ringel Lab is highly collaborative, frequently and extensively teaming with the Albert de la Chapelle Lab in Cancer Biology and Genetics and others to understand genetic disposition, cancer prevention and diagnosis as well as to develop novel therapies for late-stage thyroid cancer. More recently, as co-director of the Center for Cancer Engineering, the Ringel laboratory has been collaborating with investigators developing organoid/organ on chip technologies and experts in machine learning to develop new models and measures of cancer invasion and cancer complexity.
Mission
At the OSUCCC – James, the Ringel Lab experts’ mission is part of a globally shared goal to cure cancer, improve patient health and survivorship, and to do so through new discoveries and novel therapies.
Their groundbreaking work is more than bench to bedside. Rather, it’s bedside to bench – then back to bedside again: identifying critical physiological and biological challenges for patients, initiating and spearheading targeted research to explore those critical key issues, then using discoveries in metastasis and therapy resistance to develop novel therapeutics for treatment.
How? The Ringel Lab’s nationally and internationally recognized specialists target existing key knowledge gaps, then utilize novel engineering and technology to develop preventative and therapeutic models and systems. These systems are then used in the lab to turn into novel therapies for patients in the clinic.
Who We Are
The team of experts in the Ringel Lab is led by world-renowned thyroid cancer expert and Principal Investigator Matthew D. Ringel, MD, who is also the director of the OSUCCC – James Thyroid Cancer Program, a professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics, co-leader of the Cancer Biology Program, holds the Ralph W. Kurtz Chair in Hormonology, is an internal medicine investigator and co-director of the Center for Cancer Engineering.
Dr. Ringel has authored and co-authored more than 150 papers in numerous scientific journals, including Nature Communications, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of the American Medical Association, Cancer Research, Endocrinology, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, and many others. Among his many awards, he is an elected member of both the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians and has held numerous positions in national and international organizations.
Principal Investigator
Matthew D. Ringel, MD
Ringel Lab Members
Tilak Khanal, PhD
Nianjing Huang
Neel Rajan
Luis Bautista
Nanci Edgington
How We Do It
The OSUCCC – James Ringel Lab’s research experts work collaboratively – nationally and internationally – on genomics applications to improve patient care with novel therapies. How? A multidisciplinary team of research scientists and experts who specialize in: genomics, cancer biology, bioinformatics, medical oncology, pathology, internal medicine, data analytics and more.
The Ringel Lab is highly collaborative. Current funding involves a number of OSU team members as well as collaborators at MD Anderson Cancer Center and the Cleveland Clinic. This multi-institutional team has weekly meetings allowing for open presentations and exchange of ideas designed to maximize the pace and impact of discoveries from the collaborating laboratories.
This information-sharing and collaboration leads to synergistic, groundbreaking advancements and major discoveries in thyroid cancer research and clinical trials.
Breakthroughs and Discoveries
The OSUCCC – James Ringel Lab specialists and sub-specialists are dedicated to understanding cancer biology, thyroid cancer, endocrine cancer invasion and metastasis. Their research focuses on basic and translational science, new drug testing for thyroid cancer treatment, signaling research and finding novel therapies.
Dr. Ringel’s laboratory was the first to report major roles for Akt and PAK signaling pathways in thyroid cancer invasion and his laboratory recently identified a new metastasis progression suppression pathway linking loss of RCAN 1.4 to the transcription factor NFE2L3. In addition, his laboratory recently identified a super enhancer in the gene encoding RET. This work is being expanded to other cancers and also for the development of biomarkers and potential therapeutic approaches collaboratively in some cases through collaborations within the Center for Cancer Engineering.
In fact, this team’s groundbreaking research is funded currently by two NCI R01s and in the past by both a P01 grant and a P0 (SPORE) grant both of which Dr. Ringel was the overall principal investigator. Work in these grants included discoveries that served as the basis for identification of new pathways that have led to the discovery of genes and pathways that lead to thyroid cancer development and progression. This work has enabled the development of new biomarkers and team members have been involved in studies that resulted in new FDA-approved therapies.
Current Grants Include:
NCI R01 grant-funded study of the role of p21-activated kinases in thyroid cancer. Identification of a potentially important pathway (p21 activated kinase, or PAK) downstream of the BRAF gene that may be involved in the progression of papillary thyroid cancer, which, at present, is incurable when metastatic and progressive. The team is hoping to determine the relevance of the PAK pathway in vivo, clarify the mechanism by which it is activated and test novel compounds that block PAK activation to determine whether or not PAK is a viable therapeutic target.
NCI R01 grant-funded study of the role of RCAN 1.4 metastasis suppressor in thyroid cancer. The team has identified a new metastasis suppression signaling pathway in thyroid cancer and other solid tumors mediated by loss of RCAN 1.4 and activation of the transcription factor NFE2L3. The preliminary data suggest that this pathway regulates the development of a tumor-promoting immune environment; the proposed experiments will determine the mechanism by which activation of this pathway occurs and how it promotes cancer progression with an emphasis on future therapeutic targets.
How to Join the Ringel Group and the Collaborative Ohio State Research Team
The Ringel research experts believe that mechanistically targeting growing metastatic lesions, and blocking the metastatic progression cascade by targeting both tumor cells and cells in the environment is the next frontier in cancer treatment, and collaboration is key to advancements in this field.
The Center for Cancer Engineering designs, develops and integrates innovative engineering technologies and data analytic approaches to advance the understanding of cancer biology, biomechanics and clinical data – all to enhance cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis and treatment to improve the lives of patients with cancer.
When looking for new team members with which to collaborate, the Ringel Lab experts look for eagerness, commitment and numerous other qualities, including:
- Undergraduate students must be motivated, bright, eager to participate and determined to find out if cancer research is the career they would like to pursue.
- Graduate students must be interested in a long-term career in cancer biology and signaling research, whether their career path leads them to research at an academic medical center, a university or in the corporate world.
- For postdoctoral candidates, Dr. Ringel and his team help them further improve their training. They must have a professional synergy with other lab team members and a sincere passion for cancer biology and signaling research.
- Clinical Fellows are brought onboard to target a specific research project. They must have some experience in the area, and they must have a strong desire to continue their growth in the thyroid cancer field. Fellows also are expected to write grants.
- When faculty members are brought into the Ringel Lab fold, Dr. Ringel personally mentors them himself, which often includes five or more faculty at any given time.
For collaborative research partners, the Ringel Lab team looks for science synergy – a way to pool and harness high-level, complementary scientific talents in a well-coordinated effort to advance the field. Additionally, these experts prefer to partner with researchers who are flexible, easy to work with and can bring an equal level of excitement for rapidly moving research forward. Finally, as Dr. Ringel shares, “We need to genuinely like the people we work with – having fun is important, too.”
For more information on the team, collaborations, opportunities and lab-specific inquiries, please contact Nanci Edgington at nanci.edgington@osumc.edu.