Sadhan Majumder, Ph.D.

Dr. Majumder completed his predoctoral schooling at Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in India and received his Ph.D. from New York University. He subsequently completed his postdoctoral training at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and at Roche Institute of Molecular Biology. He joined The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in 1995 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to his current position as Professor in 2006. His current research involves deciphering the mechanisms that control normal brain functions and how aberrations in these mechanisms causes diseased states such as cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. Dr. Majumder has a strong interest in teaching. In addition to leading a lab with undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral and clinical fellows, he teaches at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and organizes a biennial course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories on Brain Tumors. Dr. Majumder has received many awards including M. D. Anderson Fort Worth Living Legend Faculty Achievement Award, National Brain Tumor Society Chaiken Chair of Research Award, and B*CURED Research Award.

Research Interests

The research in my laboratory is focused on (1) deciphering the mechanisms that control normal development, (2) learning how aberrations in these mechanisms produces diseased states, and (3) investigating how such knowledge can be translated into improved patient care. In general, we begin by studying biological mechanisms and then build on the lessons learned from those studies using multiple methods including genomics, bioinformatics, biochemistry, cell biology, and mouse genetics. Our work involves close collaboration between basic scientists and clinicians.

One of the first projects in my laboratory focused on advancing understanding of the childhood brain tumor medulloblastoma (MB) as a foundation for patient-specific therapeutic approaches. In the course of our early work, we discovered that the transcriptional repressor REST is aberrantly overexpressed in a subclass of MB tumors and that a unique role of REST in these MB tumors is to block differentiation of the cerebellar stem/progenitor cells. This work was exciting because we, using REST-VP16, and others, using HDAC- and DNMT1-inhibitors, could block REST function. Our work then evolved into an investigation of the mechanisms of stemness in neural stem cells, muscle progenitor cells, embryonic stem cells, and glioblastoma stem cells. Based on our understanding of these mechanisms, in one line of work, we converted muscle progenitor cells into functional neurons before the iPS system was published. Another line of work resolved some of the contradictions in the literature and showed that the REST-mediated regulation of ES cell pluripotency through a microRNA-mediated pathway depends on the cell type (not all ES lines are the same) as well as the culture conditions, indicating how various factors form part of an interconnected regulatory network. In a third line of work, we discovered that REST regulates glioblastoma (GBM) stem cell tumorigenicity by maintaining self-renewal and invasion. Importantly, high levels of REST characterize a class of human GBM patient tumors. Our recent genome-wide analysis followed by biochemical validation indicated that REST performs its functions in GSCs through a microRNA pathway (miR-124, a known REST target, and miR-203, a new target). In addition, using such genome-wide analyses, we discovered a new mechanism (miR-21-Sox2 regulatory axis)-based GBM patient classification with implications for precision medicine. We found that this classification identifies a distinct population of glioblastoma patients with distinguishable phenotypic characteristics and clinical outcomes. In yet another line of work, we generated conditional REST overexpression knockin mice to study REST function in the brain under physiological conditions. While studying the behavior of these mice, we found evidence suggesting that REST affects neurological and neuropsychiatric functions. We are currently using multiple methods to elucidate the role of REST in tumorigenesis and in neurological/neuropsychiatric conditions, and to examine implications for therapy.

View a complete list of Dr. Majumder's publications .