HudsonAlpha faculty investigator Sara Cooper, PhD, focuses her research efforts on understanding mechanisms of cancer pathology, progression, and chemoresistance in an effort to help personalize cancer diagnosis and treatment.

The Cooper Lab uses various genomic approaches to explore and understand cancer, with the ultimate goal of identifying signatures associated with cancer and then implementing those signatures in a clinical setting. Overall, the Cooper lab is dedicated to the identification of novel therapeutic targets, and strategies for treating pancreatic and ovarian cancer, both of which have some of the worst outcomes among cancer patients.

The lab currently focuses its efforts on the following areas:

• The identification of biomarkers of and novel targets to prevent cancer chemoresistance
• The importance of immune response in cancer
• The discovery of new genes that predispose individuals to cancer