Emily Herrmann Presidential Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research & Director, Dr. Mary and Ron Neal Cancer Center
Professor of Medicine, Academic Institute
Full Member, Research Institute
Houston Methodist
Weill Cornell Medical College
Jenny Chang, MD, is the Director of the Houston Methodist Dr. Mary and Ron Neal Cancer Center and holds the Emily Herrmann Presidential Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research. She is a Professor of Cancer with the Institute for Academic Medicine and a member of the Houston Methodist Research Institute and Professor at Weill Cornell Medical School. She obtained her medical degree at Cambridge University in England and completed fellowship training in medical oncology at the Royal Marsden Hospital/Institute for Cancer Research in the United Kingdom. She was also awarded a research doctorate from the University of London. Her recent work has focused on the intrinsic therapy resistance of cancer stem cells, and the role of targeting inflammatory pathways to change tumor immune microenvironment. Dr. Chang's clinical research aims to evaluate these novel biologic agents in breast cancer patients.
Dr. Chang has worked in the field of tumor-initiating cells for more than ten years. After her discovery that tumor-initiating cells are chemo-resistant, and that targeting the EGFR/HER2 pathway can decrease this subpopulation, Dr. Chang has played a key role in demonstrating some of the limitations and mechanisms of tumor-initiating cells (Creighton et al., 2009; Li et al., 2008). Her work is now focused on the mechanisms that regulate TICs, as well as initiating and planning clinical trials that target this critical tumor initiating subpopulation. She is also interested in characterizing the cross-talk between these different pathways that may lead to mechanisms of resistance, and has identified some of the chief regulatory pathways involved in TIC self-renewal. She is a world-renown clinical investigator, credited as one of the first to describe intrinsic chemo-resistance of tumor-initiating cells.
