Drug adaptation in melanomas and other cancers driven by different oncogenic pathways limits therapeutic effectiveness and appears to promote the emergence of cells carrying resistance mutations resulting in resurgent disease. Understanding and effectively targeting resistance mechanisms is needed to increase the durability of therapeutic response. I will describe a systems pharmacology approach combining multiplex biochemical measurements, single-cell analysis and computational modeling to characterize drug-induced adaptive responses and their consequences for cancer cell fate. This approach identifies potential strategies to enhance drug maximal effect and to overcome drug resistance.
Dr. Mohammad Fallahi-Sichani is a Life Sciences Research Foundation (LSRF) Postdoctoral Fellow, working with Prof. Peter Sorger in the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 2012 from the University of Michigan under the joint supervision of Prof. Jennifer Linderman and Prof. Denise Kirschner. His postdoctoral research currently funded by an NCI K99 Pathway to Independence Award is focused on understanding mechanisms of adaptive resistance and fractional response of cancer cells to anti-cancer drugs. His doctoral thesis combined multi-scale modeling approaches with experiments on mouse models of tuberculosis to the study of mechanisms by which TNF signaling determines immunity to Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. His postdoctoral and doctoral research were awarded the 2015 Scholar-in-Training Award from the American Association for Cancer Research and the 2011 Richard and Eleanor Towner Prize for Outstanding PhD Research from the University of Michigan.