Hunain Khawaja

Research Advisors: 

Cynthia Miranti

Ghassan Mouneimne

Research Topic:

1. Investigate the role of progenitor cells in normal prostate Basal to Luminal cell differentiation and in Prostate tumor oncogenesis.

2. Exploring the effects of stiffness on chemoresistance in ER+ Breast Cancer.

3. Investigating mechano-induced NOTCH3 mediated tumor cells trans-differentiation in the bone-microenvironment.

Selected Publications:

Lim, K. R. Q., Maruyama, R., Echigoya, Y., Nguyen, Q., Zhang, A., Khawaja, H., Sen Chandra, S., Jones, T., Jones, P., Chen, Y. W., & Yokota, T. (2020). Inhibition of DUX4 expression with antisense LNA gapmers as a therapy for facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(28), 16509–16515. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1909649117

Le, K., Sun, J., Khawaja, H., Shibata, M., Maggirwar, S., Smith, M., and Gupta, M. (2021). Mantle Cell Lymphoma Cells Polarize Macrophages Toward Protumor-Associated M2-Phenotype. Blood Advances 5(14):2863-78. PMID: 34297045.

Han PA, Kim HS, Cho S, Fazeli R, Najafian A, Khawaja H, McAlexander M, Dy B, Sorensen M, Aronova A, Sebo TJ, Giordano TJ, Fahey TJ 3rd, Thompson GB, Gauger PG, Somervell H, Bishop JA, Eshleman JR, Schneider EB, Witwer KW, Umbricht CB, Zeiger MA. Association of BRAF V600E Mutation and MicroRNA Expression with Central Lymph Node Metastases in Papillary Thyroid Cancer: A Prospective Study from Four Endocrine Surgery Centers. Thyroid. 2016 Apr;26(4):532-42. doi: 10.1089/thy.2015.0378. Epub 2016 Mar 7. PMID: 26950846; PMCID: PMC4827320.

Selected Presentation:

Poster presentation: AACR Special Conference: Advances in Prostate Cancer Research, Mar 2023, Denver, CO
Identifying the molecular signature of bi-potent prostate epithelial cells through scRNA-seq