The 2018 An Evening with DocStars was hosted by The Cary Council on October 25 at UT Southwestern Medical Center. This signature event supports young UT Southwestern investigators working on promising early stage research, and we’re sharing bios of the three finalist DocStars who were selected by UT Southwestern leadership and The Cary Council.
Building targeted therapies to overcome treatment-resistant breast cancer
Dr. Alluri earned his medical degree at the University of Minnesota Medical School and received a doctorate in chemical biology from UT Southwestern Medical Center. He then completed a research fellowship in translational oncology and a residency in radiation oncology at the University of Michigan Medical School, where he was also a chief resident. Dr. Alluri has received many recognitions for both his research contributions and clinical care, including the Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO/Breast Cancer Research Foundation Young Investigators Award in 2017. Specialized in the treatment of breast cancer, Dr. Alluri hopes to address a primary obstacle all patients with metastatic breast cancer face—their tumors’ resistance to treatment. The goal of his project is to understand on a molecular level how tumors develop treatment resistance and to devise new targeted therapies to overcome resistance. To accomplish this, Dr. Alluri and his team will comprehensively analyze the genetic sequence of treatment-resistant patient tumors to understand how resistance works and identify new potential drug targets specific to each patient. By working with breast cancer cell lines, they have already identified a promising drug that inhibits growth of these treatment-resistant cells, providing clues into cellular pathways that may overcome resistance. As part of this project, they will further investigate this drug in mouse models of resistant tumors.
