BME Seminar: Ghassan Mouneimne
Monday, March 11, 2024 - 12:00 p.m.
Ghassan Mouneimne, PhD
Associate Professor
Cellular and Molecular Medicine
University of Arizona
"Getting Past the Genetic Drivers: How Does the Tumor Microenvironment Influence Metastatic Predisposition?"
Keating 103
Zoom link | Password: BearDown
Hosts: Dr. Mario Romero-Ortega and Dr. Shang Song
(Instructor permission required for enrolled students to attend via Zoom)
Persons with a disability may request a reasonable accommodation by contacting the Disability Resource Center at 621-3268 (V/TTY).
Abstract: Beyond understanding the genetic drivers of metastatic progression, we need to examine the cell extrinsic factors in the tumor microenvironment that play an important role in determining the metastatic potential of cancer cells. These factors not only influence the behavior of cancer cells locally within the primary tumor, but also encodes lasting and distinct metastatic phenotypes in the secondary tumor site.
Bio: Dr. Mouneimne earned his PhD from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, studying the migratory behavior of invading cancer cells in Dr. John Condeelis’ laboratory. During his postdoctoral training with Dr. Joan Brugge at Harvard Medical School, he pursued new approaches for studying the role of the cytoskeleton in regulating cancer cell invasion, including strategies combining in vitro and in vivo modeling of human cancers with bioinformatic and histological analyses of clinical samples. In his own laboratory, Dr. Mouneimne focuses on understanding the plasticity of invading cancer cells in complex heterogeneous tumor microenvironments, with the goal of developing therapies that are more effective in blocking metastasis. Dr. Mouneimne is currently a tenured associate professor in Cellular and Molecular Medicine.