Dr. Cullen Taniguchi, MD – Houston, TX

Dr. Taniguchi is an Associate Professor in Radiation Oncology at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, specializing in treating gastrointestinal malignancies, with a clinical focus on unresectable pancreatic cancer, which accounts for over 45,000 patients each year. He is the principal investigator of an NIH0-funded laboratory that focuses on exploiting basic and translational aspects of hypoxia biology for maximal therapeutic good in cancer, regenerative medicine and metabolism. For instance, the Taniguchi laboratory has discovered that inhibition of the EGLN proteins helps tissues to heal after radiation or chemotherapy injury, and have developed the use of EGLN inhibitors like FG-4592 to protect normal tissues from radiation toxicity. His lab is focused on understanding how EGLN inhibitors like FG-4592 can be combined with current cancer treatments to enable higher, and potentially curative, doses of cytotoxic treatments and is the PI on an open clinical trial at UT MD Anderson based on this novel concept. The Taniguchi Lab has also developed autochthonous tumor models to understand the role of the stromal EGLN expression in regulating pancreatic tumor metabolism, development, and progression.