Research assistant
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Department of Cell & Developmental Biology
Email: kelly.christian@vanderbilt.edu
Knoxville, TN
B.S. Biomedical Engineering
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 2006
Aberrant Wnt pathway activation plays a central role in the onset and progression of a number of human cancers. Drugs that block this activation would be invaluable in the clinic as anti-cancer therapies; however, there remains a dearth of viable options on the market despite the need for Wnt inhibitors. We are actively screening drug libraries to identify new compound that have the potential of being future anti-cancer drugs. I specialize in high-throughput technology and mammalian cell culture, developing and performing Wnt relevant assays to aid in identifying and validating lead compounds. My work is part of the NIH-funded GI SPORE grant, a multiple-lab collaborative effort at Vanderbilt to translate basic biological discoveries into real clinical advances for GI related cancers. We currently have one lead compound that is being tested in mouse cancer models.