2022 Annual Report

Van Andel Institute Principal Investigators
DEPARTMENT OF EPIGENETICS (CONTINUED)
J. Andrew Pospisilik, Ph.D.
Professor
Dr. J. Andrew Pospisilik seeks
to understand how we become
whom we become, and how our
disease susceptibility is defined
from early on in life, even before
conception, with the long-term goal of being able to
predict a lifelong health outlook at birth.
Scott Rothbart, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Dr. Scott Rothbart studies the
ways in which cells pack and
unpack DNA. This elegant process
twists and coils roughly two
meters of unwound DNA into a
space less than one-tenth the width of a human hair.
Although this process is impressive, it is also subject to
errors that can cause cancer and other disorders.
Dr. Rothbart seeks new targets for drug development in
this process.
Hui Shen, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Dr. Hui Shen develops new
approaches to cancer prevention,
detection and treatment by
studying the interaction between
genes and their control systems,
called epigenetics. Her research focuses on women’s
cancers, particularly ovarian cancer, and has shed new
light on the underlying mechanisms of many other
cancer types.
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Piroska Szabó, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Dr. Piroska Szabó studies the flow
of epigenetic information from
parents to their offspring, with a
focus on how epigenetic markers
are remodeled during egg and
sperm production, and how these markers are rewritten
after fertilization. These processes have profound
implications for fertility and embryo development.
Timothy J. Triche, Jr., Ph.D.
Associate Professor
As a statistician and
computational biologist with an
interest in clonal evolution and
cancers of the blood, the work of
Dr. Timothy J. Triche, Jr., focuses
on wedding data-intensive molecular phenotyping to
adaptive clinical trial designs in an effort to accelerate
the pace of drug targeting and development in rare or
refractory diseases.
Hong Wen, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Dr. Hong Wen investigates the
molecular underpinnings of
pediatric cancers, with a focus
on how epigenetic dysregulation
impacts gene expression and
drives malignancy. Her work holds great promise
for developing new, improved therapies for these
devastating diseases.
FEDERAL AND
FOUNDATIONAL
FUNDING IN 2022
Awards breakdown
New Awards in 2022:
35
Figures current as of November 2022
Active Awards:
133
Figures current as of November 2022
Active Award Funding:
$166.1 million
Figures current as of November 2022