Primary Appointment

Dr. Garth Powis is leading the charge to coordinate all stages of the drug discovery and development process at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. As director of the Center for Targeted Therapy and professor and chairman of the Department of Experimental Therapeutics, he believes that the academic environment is ideal for initiating and developing new therapies.

Since his recruitment to M. D. Anderson in 2005, Dr. Powis is steadily working to make the promise of personalized medicine a reality.  The Center for Targeted Therapy is a state-of-the-art facility offering a number of services and allowing researchers and clinicians alike the ability to identify new molecular targets and design new, specific and more effective drugs with less toxicity, targeted for individualized therapy. It is a mission that begins with a concept to identify molecular and genetic targets specific to each patient, continues with drug discovery and development and is followed by clinical trials. Bringing novel therapeutic and preventive drugs from the bench to the bedside, quicker than ever before, is his ultimate goal for the Center for Targeted Therapy.

A pioneer of the targeting of signaling pathways for cancer drug discovery, Dr. Powis is the author of four books. He has published more than 350 peer-reviewed articles and holds 12 patents in the area of cancer drug discovery and development. Dr. Powis is a member of the editorial board for several leading scientific publications including the Journals of Molecular Pharmacology, Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, Cancer Pharmacology and Therapeutics and Clinical Cancer Research. His research interests include mechanism of action of new anti-cancer drug, inhibition of P13K/AKT survival signaling and inhibition of redox and hypoxia signaling in cancer and inhibiting KRAS signaling.  He has developed 3 cancer drugs, a thioredoxin inhibitor, a P13K inhibitor and a HIF-1alpha inhibitor that are currently in early clinical trial and has novel KRAS, RAL and second generation HIF-1alpha inhibitors in development.

Exploiting Tumor Stress Response for Cancer Therapy

Solid tumors exist in a stressed environment for cell growth. In order to survive, cancer cells initiate specific adaptive and constitutive changes allowing them to adapt to the hostile hypoxic environment, dispose of reactive oxygen species, escape cell death and increase formation of new blood vessels and metastasis. All of these responses lead to highly aggressive tumors that are resistant to therapy. In order to identify novel targets for therapeutic intervention that is applicable to a wide variety of tumor types, his lab studies the mechanisms that enable cancer cells to survive stress.

KRAS is an oncogene known for many years but without an effective therapy.  Dr. Powis's work has shown that different isoforms of KRAS activates different downstream signaling inhibitors.  He is developing novel inhibitors of KRAS to inhibit all forms of oncogenic KRAS but not non mutant KRAS.

Please visit the Powis Lab.

Last updated: 3/15/2013