Jim Costello

The Costello lab focuses on discovering and modeling the molecular mechanisms that drive cancer with the ultimate goal of developing novel therapeutic treatments. We view cancer as the dysfunction of a larger biological system, and therefore, we integrate systems-level measurements (e.g. transcriptomics, metabolomics) and computational models with in vitro and in vivo experimental approaches. The integration of wet and dry approaches and our ability of analyze ‘Big Data’ have put us in a unique and advantageous position to develop systems biology research projects fully within the lab. A major active area of research is to identify chemoresistance mechanisms in bladder cancer using functional genomics methods, computational models, and various in vitro models of drug resistance. A second major active area of research is to identify and validate causal drivers of aggressive prostate cancer using computational models and an in vivo tissue recombination mouse model that allows us to study the developing pathology of disease. We are actively recruiting students to work on both projects.