About

Dean W. Felsher is a Professor of Medicine (Oncology) and Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine. His laboratory studies how oncogenes such as MYC initiate and maintain cancer, with a focus on how shutting down oncogenes can reverse cancer or elicit 'Oncogene Addiction.' His research explores basic mechanisms of oncogene addiction, including the roles of self-renewal/stemness, metabolism, host immune response, protein biogenesis, microbiome, and extracellular vesicles. Felsher is developing novel therapeutics using small molecules, nanoparticles, and proteins/peptides to target oncogenes and restore immune responses against cancer. His work also involves developing new diagnostic and imaging methods such as PET, mass spectrometry, and nanoproteomics. Additionally, he is involved in clinical trials aimed at improving cancer treatment monitoring and understanding treatment responses, including studies on perfusion CT in kidney cancer and antibiotic therapy in chemotherapy-induced neutropenia. Felsher's contributions have significantly advanced understanding of oncogene-driven cancers and therapeutic strategies to target them.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Biology
• Internal medicine
• Genetics
• Computational biology
• Cancer research
• Risk analysis (engineering)
• Cell biology
• Bioinformatics
• Immunology
• Chemistry

Selected publications

• The MYC oncogene — the grand orchestrator of cancer growth and immune evasion

  Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology · 2021 · 938 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Cancer research
  • Medicine
  • Immunology
  DOI

• The Key Characteristics of Carcinogens: Relationship to the Hallmarks of Cancer, Relevant Biomarkers, and Assays to Measure Them

  Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention · 2020 · 110 citations

  • Computational biology
  • Bioinformatics
  • Biology

  We identified gaps in coverage of the KCs by current assays. Future efforts should expand the breadth, specificity, and sensitivity of validated assays and biomarkers that can measure the 10 KCs. Refinement of the KC approach will enhance and accelerate carcinogen identification, a first step in cancer prevention.

  DOI

• Mitochondrial copper depletion suppresses triple-negative breast cancer in mice

  Nature Biotechnology · 2020 · 335 citations

  • Cancer research
  • Biology
  • Chemistry
  DOI

• Genomic Analysis of Vascular Invasion in HCC Reveals Molecular Drivers and Predictive Biomarkers

  Hepatology · 2020 · 90 citations

  • Biology
  • Computational biology
  • Medicine

  BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Vascular invasion (VI) is a critical risk factor for HCC recurrence and poor survival. The molecular drivers of vascular invasion in HCC are open for investigation. Deciphering the molecular landscape of invasive HCC will help identify therapeutic targets and noninvasive biomarkers. APPROACH AND RESULTS: ) conserved across the two species. Mechanistically, we show that FN1 promotes the migratory and invasive phenotype of HCC cancer cells. We demonstrate tissue overexpression of fibronectin in human HCC using a large independent cohort of human HCC tissue microarray (n = 153; P < 0.001). Lastly, we showed that plasma fibronectin levels were significantly elevated in patients with HCC (n = 35; mean = 307.7 μg/mL; SEM = 35.9) when compared to cirrhosis (n = 10; mean = 41.8 μg/mL; SEM = 13.3; P < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: Our study evaluates the molecular landscape of tumors with VI, identifying distinct transcriptional, epigenetic, and proteomic changes driven by the MYC oncogene. We show that MYC up-regulates fibronectin expression, which promotes HCC invasiveness. In addition, we identify fibronectin to be a promising noninvasive proteomic biomarker of VI in HCC.

  DOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01CA089305

  NIH · $3.7M · 2012

• NIH Grant K08CA075967

  NIH · $481k · 2003

• NIH Grant P01CA034233

  NIH · $36.4M · 2012

• NIH Grant R01CA208735

  NIH · $2.2M · 2022

• NIH Grant R01CA170378

  NIH · $2.1M · 2017

Frequent coauthors

• Alice C. Fan

  78 shared

• Phuoc T. Tran

  University of Maryland, Baltimore

  63 shared

• Sanjiv S. Gambhir

  Stanford University

  39 shared

• David I. Bellovin

  34 shared

• Bikul Das

  Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati

  34 shared

• Catherine M. Shachaf

  34 shared

• Sylvie Giuriato

  Inserm

  31 shared

• René Opavský

  Florida College

  31 shared

Labs

• Felsher LaboratoryPI

Education

• M.D.

  Stanford University

• B.S.

  University of California, Berkeley

Awards & honors

• Elected Member, Association of American Physicians (2011)
• Translational Research Award, Burroughs Wellcome Trust (2005…
• Elected Member, American Society of Clinical Investigation (…
• Clinical Investigator Award, Damon Runyon Foundation (2003-2…
• Charles Carrington Prize, Stanford University (2002)

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