About Me

I am Doris Stormyr Anderson Professor, and currently serve as Associate Director of Education and Training and as Associate Director of Shared Resources at the Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center. I have been studying the molecular mechanism of tumor progression and metastasis in breast and lung cancers. My team has pioneered work in metastasis suppressor genes and made seminal contributions to this field. My current research focuses are the roles of tumor microenvironment, non-coding RNA in cancer stem cell niches and developing innovative immunotherapies. Our lab published over 150 papers in this field (h-index=51). The discoveries were selected as “The molecular of the year” in 2011 by ISMCBB, and also selected as top 100 discovery in Discover magazine in 2013. Our projects have been continuously funded by NIH and other federal funding agencies. Our ultimate goal is to develop a therapeutic strategy to keep tumor cells in perpetual dormancy and treat metastatic cancer as a manageable chronic disease.

I have served on numerous federal and nonfederal grant review panels and I have led multiple team science projects in three different institutions. I also currently serve as the director for both T32 Translational Oncology Training Program and a R25 training program to promote diversity in cancer research.

Research Laboratory 

Kounosuke Watabe Lab - Understanding the molecular mechanism of tumor metastasis in breast and prostate cancers.

Educational Program Involvement

Cancer Biology PhD
Program Research Interest:
Cellular defense and metabolism, Aberrant signaling pathways in tumor cells, Cell growth and survival, Molecular cancer epidemiology, Gene-environment interactions, Cancer control