Institutions:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
North Carolina State University
About:
Research in the Rizvi lab focuses on identifying, and photochemically targeting, sources of treatment failure in cancer with an emphasis on the following key areas: 1.) Iterative and collaborative development of physiologically-relevant in vitro and in vivo tumor models. The focus is to integrate principles from engineering and cancer biology to develop technologies designed to elucidate sources of treatment resistance; 2.) Identification of molecular survival pathways that are modulated by external cues such as flow-induced shear stress, and more recently environmental contaminants, as determinants of chemoresistance in ovarian cancer; 3.) Development of optically-triggered and imaging-informed targeted combination therapies to maximize potency with minimal off-target toxicity. The design of these combinations is based on the mechanistically-distinct cytotoxicity conferred by photodynamic therapy (PDT), the core light-triggered modality, and the ability of PDT to reverse chemoresistance, synergize with chemotherapeutics and biologics, and overcome compensatory survival pathways.
