Scientific Advisory Board
Cedars-Sinai
Director, Cancer Biology Program, Cedars-Sinai Cancer Institute
Professor of Medicine Cedars-Sinai Medical Center/UCLA.
Dr. Bhowmick is on the Editorial Board of 4 scientific journals, and charter member of a NIH grant study section. He is Chief Scientific Officer for Kairos Pharma Ltd. and Armida Labs, Inc with more than 20 years of broad Biochemistry experience filing and prosecuting patents in therapeutics and biomarker devices. Dr. Bhowmick is credited for defining the role of fibroblasts in cancer initiation as an alternative mechanism of the familiar two-hit hypothesis where one epigenetic alteration is in the fibroblasts, complementing a mutation in the epithelia. He has gone on to discover the role of fibroblasts in cancer therapy resistance and has used this finding to extend the time of cancer remission in multiple cancer types in preclinical and clinical examples.
Dr. Bhowmick is credited with the identification of the role of tissue fibroblastic cells in cancer initiation. He studies the role of the tumor microenvironment in prostate, lung and pancreatic cancer progression, mediators of metastatic progression, and therapy resistance through in vivo model systems and clinical trials. Dr. Bhowmick is currently working on candidate therapeutics to address host-tumor interactions and the development of a biomarker platform to help distinguish indolent and aggressive cancer.
Dr. Bhowmick obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia (1998) and his undergraduate degree from the University of Florida (1991). He trained in structure-function biology of luteinizing hormone-receptor interactions and went on to identify how stromal fibroblasts and associated cancer cells communicate via transforming growth factor-ß signaling at Vanderbilt University. These experiences have helped his laboratory identify targets for intervention that can serve to support sensitivity to current cancer cell targeted therapies. Applications of these concepts have resulted in testing in cytokine and metabolic regulators in clinically relevant animal models of prostate, lung, renal, colon, pancreatic and bladder cancer. His lab is focused on cross-disciplinary collaborations that have enabled us to interrogate signaling mechanisms and therapeutic development for cancer patients.