Our Focus
Drug resistance of tumor cells is the cause of treatment failure for most human cancers. Acquired resistance was observed in the very first clinical administration of a chemotherapeutic agent in 1942. Since that time, vast improvements in chemotherapy- including novel drugs, combination therapies, reduced toxicity, and highly targeted treatments- have extended the lives of many cancer patients. Yet drug resistance remains a major scientific and clinical challenge in the treatment of human cancer. Tumor cell populations are characterized by enormous heterogeneity and plasticity. This variation contributes to disease progression and response to therapy, although the mechanisms are not yet well understood. To address these challenges, we are developing novel technologies and experimental systems rooted in the tools of systems and synthetic biology and bioengineering.
Drug resistance of tumor cells is the cause of treatment failure for most human cancers. Acquired resistance was observed in the very first clinical administration of a chemotherapeutic agent in 1942. Since that time, vast improvements in chemotherapy- including novel drugs, combination therapies, reduced toxicity, and highly targeted treatments- have extended the lives of many cancer patients. Yet drug resistance remains a major scientific and clinical challenge in the treatment of human cancer. Tumor cell populations are characterized by enormous heterogeneity and plasticity. This variation contributes to disease progression and response to therapy, although the mechanisms are not yet well understood. To address these challenges, we are developing novel technologies and experimental systems rooted in the tools of systems and synthetic biology and bioengineering.
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Featured Publications & Preprints
Lineage Tracing Reveals Clone-Specific Responses to Doxorubicin in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Morgan, D., Gardner, A.L., Brock, A. (2025) bioRxiv Access Online Mapping cell-cell fusion at single-cell resolution Gardner, A. L., Zheng, L., Howland, K., Saunders, A., Ramirez, A., Parker, P., Iloegbunam, C., Morgan, D., Jost, T. A., & Brock, A. (2025) bioRxiv Access Online Pycashier: cash in on DNA barcode tags. Morgan, D., Brock, A. (2024) Journal of Open Source Software Access Online Computational identification of surface markers for isolating distinct subpopulations from heterogeneous cancer cell populations Gardner, A.L., Jost, T.A., Morgan, D., Brock, A. (2024) npj Systems Biology and Applications Access Online |
Lab News
10/2025 Michael gave a talk at the 2025 UT Austin Cancer Research Retreat titled: "Tracking Transcriptomic Drivers of Heterogeneous Resistance to Targeted Therapy in TNBC With Cell Barcodes" 10/2025 Michael, Kennedy, and Sarah presented their posters at the 2025 CSBC Annual Meeting, co-chaired by Dr. Amy Brock in Memphis, Tennessee! 09/2025 Congrats to Carolina De Santiago for successfully defending her thesis: “Clonal Resolution of Subpopulation Heterogeneity Underlying Invasion and Proliferation in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer”! 08/2025 Sarah presented a poster at the NCI Junior Investigators Meeting titled: "Nutrient Availability Shapes Cooperative Metabolic Interactions in Triple Negative Breast Cancer Clones" 07/2025 Amy is excited to support the cancer systems biology community as the new Associate Editor of Computational and Systems Oncology journal (Wiley). 07/2025 Congratulations to Michael on his excellent oral presentation at the Society for Mathematical Biology in Alberta! 04/23/2025 Congrats to Didi for being a selected participant in the 2025 Rising Stars in Computational and Data Science Workshop. |