Research Interests
- Mechanisms of action of combination cancer therapies
- Impact of tumor heterogeneity on drug response
- Biomarker discovery for precision cancer therapy
- Curative drug combinations for lymphomas
Research Synopsis
The Palmer laboratory investigates combinations of cancer therapies: understanding the mechanisms of successful drug combinations, to inform the development of combinations with new cancer therapies. Our approach is a synthesis of experimental studies, computational analysis of clinical data, and mathematical modeling. I have a particular interest in the clinical implications of variation in drug response between patients and between cells (a consequence of inter-tumor and intra-tumor heterogeneity). Because heterogeneity is a universal feature of cancers and their responses to therapy, this research impacts our understanding of treatment success and failure across many forms of cancer and types of therapies. Our experimental focus is on curative combination therapies for aggressive lymphomas; many new therapies have been developed for these diseases, and we are taking a systematic approach to find optimal drug combinations for different patient subsets. The basic and translational research we are pursuing serves the practical goal of improving the design of drug combinations and the interpretation of clinical trials that test them.
Students interested in studying drug combinations with quantitative experiments, or computational modeling, or a mixture of both, are encouraged to write to acpalmer@gmail.com.
