Frank Jones, PhD

Research in our laboratory focuses on the development and testing of targeted therapeutics for the treatment of refractory and often lethal solid tumors. Our goal is to reduce the clinical dependency on chemotherapeutic drugs for the treatment of patients with aggressive life-threatening tumors. We have identified cooperation between the receptor tyrosine kinase HER2 and EGFR which drive aggressive breast and lung cancers, respectively. Using targeted therapeutics directed against these receptors we propose to suppress breast and lung tumors without the use of cytotoxic therapy. Because targeted therapies are tumor specific we predict that this therapeutic approach would be highly effective and we anticipate that patients treated with targeted therapeutics will suffer few if any treatment induced side-effects.