Oncology Research

The Oncology department at the Montefiore Medical Center currently has 10 full time laboratory research faculty, who utilize modern techniques in cell biology, molecular biology, genetics, pharmacology and computational biology to advance the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

Our faculty's primary areas of expertise are tumor biology, cancer chemotherapy, and translational research (applying information obtained in the lab to the clinic). Areas being studied include angiogenesis, anti-sense RNA, apoptosis, cell differentiation, chemoprevention, drug development, genetic animal models of cancer, molecular marker characterization of tumors, signal transduction and tumorigenesis. Types of malignancies that are studied include colorectal, breast, lung, ovarian and prostate cancers, and leukemia.

Selected Departmental Publications

Aslam F, Palumbo L, Augenlicht LH, Velcich A (2001) The Sp family of transcription factors in the regulation of the human and mouse MUC2 gene promoters. Cancer Research 61:570-6.

Augenlicht LH and Heerdt BG (2001) Mitochondria: integrators in tumorigenesis? Nature Genetics 28:104-105.

Augenlicht L, Shi L, Mariadason J, Laboisse C, Velcich A. (2003) Repression of MUC2 gene expression by butyrate, a physiological regulator of intestinal cell maturation. Oncogene 22:4983-92.

Gallagher RE (2002) Review: Retinoic acid-resistance in acute promyelocytic leukemia. Leukemia 16:1940-1958.

Gallagher RE, Yeap BY, Bi W, Livak KJ, Beaubier N, Rao S, Bloomfield CD, Appelbaum FR, Tallman MS, Slack JL, and Willman CL (2003) Quantitative real-time RT-PCR analysis of PML-RARa mRNA in acute promyelocytic leukemia: assessment of prognostic significance in adult patients from intergroup protocol 0129. Blood 101: 2521-2528.

Heerdt BG, Houston MA, Anthony GM and Augenlicht LH (1998) Mitochondrial membrane potential in the coordination of p53-independent proliferation and apoptosis pathways in human colonic carcinoma cells. Cancer Research 58:2869-2875.

Heerdt BG, Houston MA, Wilson AJ and Augenlicht LH (2003) The intrinsic mitochondrial membrane potential (delta psim) is associated with steady state mitochondrial activity and the extent to which colonic epithelial cells undergo butyrate mediated growth arrest and apoptosis. Cancer Research 63: 6311-6319.

Hotchkiss KA, Ashton AW, Mahmood R, Russell RG, Sparano JA and Schwartz EL (2002) Inhibition of endothelial cell function in vitro and angiogenesis in vivo by docetaxel (taxotere): association with impaired repositioning of the microtubule organizing center. Molecular Cancer Therapeutics 1:1191-1200.

Hotchkiss KA, Ashton AW and Schwartz EL (2003) The angiogenic factors thymidine phosphorylase and 2-deoxyribose stimulate human endothelial cell migration by activation of integrins a5b1 and aVb3. Journal Biological Chemistry 278:19272-19279.

Hotchkiss KA, Ashton AW, Klein RS, Lenzi ML, Zhu GH and Schwartz EL (2003) Mechanisms by which tumor cells and monocytes expressing the angiogenic factor thymidine phosphorylase mediate human endothelial cell migration. Cancer Research 63:527-533.

Huang G, Einstein M, Khabele D and Goldberg, GL. (2003) Serum biomarkers for epithelial ovarian cancer. Women's Oncology Review 3:117-22.

Khabele D, Runowicz CD, Fields AL, Anderson PS, Goldberg, GL. (2003) Evaluation of low-dose intraperitoneal interferon-alpha for palliation of ascites in patients with non-ovarian gynecologic malignancies. Gynecological Oncology 89:420-3.

Khabele D, Runowicz CD. (2002) Genetic counseling, testing and screening for breast and ovarian cancer: practical and social considerations. Current Womens Health Report 2:163-9.

Klampfer L, Huang J, Sasazuki T, Shirasawa S, Augenlicht L (2003) Inhibition of interferon gamma signaling by the short chain fatty acid butyrate. Molecular Cancer Research 1:855-62.

Klampfer L, Huang J, Corner G, Mariadason J, Arango D, Sasazuki T, Shirasawa S, Augenlicht L (2003) Oncogenic Ki-Ras inhibits the expression of interferon-responsive genes through inhibition of STAT1 and STAT2 expression. Journal Biological Chemistry 278:46278-87.

Lai J, Benimetskaya L, Santella R, Wang Q, Miller P and Stein CA (2003) G3139 (Oblimersen) may inhibit prostate cancer cell growth in a partially bis-CpG-dependent non-antisense manner. Molecular Cancer Therapeutics 2:1031-1043.

Mariadason JM, Arango D, Corner GA, Aranes MRJ, Hotchkiss K, Yang W, Augenlicht LH (2002) A gene expression profile that defines colon cell maturation in vitro. Cancer Research 62: 4791-4804.

Mariadason JM, Arango D, Shi D, Wilson AJ, Corner GA, Nicholas C, Aranes MJ, Aaltonen L, Lesser M, Schwartz EL, Augenlicht LH (2003) Gene expression profiling-based prediction of response of colon carcinoma cells to chemotherapeutic agents. Cancer Research, in press.

Sood B, Jones J, Gupta S, Khabele D, Guha C, Runowicz C, Goldberg G, Fields A, Anderson P, Vikram B. (2003) Patterns of failure after the multimodality treatment of uterine papillary serous carcinoma. International Journal Radiation Oncology Biological Physics 57: 208-16.

Zhou DC, Kim SH, Ding W, Schulz C, Warrell Jr RP and Gallagher RE (2002) Frequent mutations in the ligand binding domain of PML-RARa after multiple relapse of acute promyelocytic leukemia: analysis for functional relationship to response to all-trans retinoic acid and histone deacetylase inhibitors in vitro and in vivo. Blood 99:1356-1363.

Velcich A, Yang W, Heyer J, Fragale A, Nicholas C, Viani S, Kucherlapati R, Lipkin M, Yang K, Augenlicht L (2002) Colorectal cancer in mice genetically deficient in the mucin Muc2. Science 295:1726-9.