Traver Hart
Associate Professor
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Department of Systems Biology
The Hart Lab at MD Anderson studies the functional genomics of cancer using a combination of high-throughput experiments and integrated computational analysis. We study the functional genomics of cancer cells using a combination of high-throughput CRISPR screening (Hart et al, Cell, 2015) and integrated computational analysis (Kim & Hart, Genome Medicine, 2021; Colic et al, Genome Medicine, 2019). Our highly collaborative research has enabled important advances in genotype-specific therapeutic targeting (Steinhart et al, Nature Medicine, 2017), expanding the role of targeted therapies including PARP inhibitors (Zimmermann et al, Nature 2018) and temozolomide (MacLeod et al, Cell Reports, 2019), and learning the genetic determinants of immuno-oncology (Lawson et al, Nature, 2020). In the short term we seek to match tumors with effective drugs, and to identify new drug targets where current drugs are lacking, while our long-term goal is a deeper understanding of the coincident sets of biological process that cancer cells rely on for growth and metastasis, and ultimately a predictive model of response to therapies that eliminates tumors while anticipating and preventing acquired resistance.
Within the framework of these overarching goals, a wide array of tutorial projects are possible, including computational projects developing new methods and conducting meta-analyses of published data, experimental projects developing and validating new CRISPR perturbation technologies, and integrative hybrid work combining the two approaches.
Education & Training
Ph.D. - The University of Texas at Austin - 2008