Pooja Anil Shah

Dr. Pooja A. Shah, PhD did her graduate training with Dr. Michael Blank at the Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel where she studied post-translational modifications. Her research identified Topoisomerase IIα, lamin, progerin and KAP1 as key substrates of the E3-Ubiquitin ligase SMURF2 that regulate important cellular processes including DNA damage repair and ageing respectively. She has over 5 peer reviewed publications in leading journals, with one of them featured on the journal cover. As a post-doctoral fellow at MD Anderson Cancer Center, Dr. Shah works with Dr. Faye Johnson, in the Department of Thoracic, Head and Neck Medical Oncology. Her current project builds up on the lab’s previous finding that established a therapeutic vulnerability of NOTCH1-mutant HNSCC to PI3K/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitor, leading to a clinical trial (NCT03740100). Dr. Shah is currently working on understanding the underlying novel mechanisms that govern the sensitivity of NOTCH1-mutant HNSCC to PI3K inhibition.