Devon Lawson Email & Phone Number

I am an Assistant Professor at the University of California, at Irvine, Medical School. My lab is in the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, and affiliated with the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center. I did my postdoc in the laboratory of Dr. Zena Werb at UCSF, studying breast cancer metastasis, and completed my Ph.D. at UCLA in the lab of Dr. Owen Witte, where I pioneered methods for the identification of stem cells in the murine prostate and studied their role in prostate cancer initiation and progression. My lab at UCI focuses on investigating how cancer cells metastasize, since this phase of the disease represents the biggest challenge to long-term patient survival and quality of life. In particular, I have been applying several new single-cell approaches to study cellular diversity in metastatic breast cancer cells using human patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models of the disease. I have focused on identifying gene expression programs specific to metastasis-initiating cells (MICs), with a long-term goal of using insights gained from these studies to identify new drug targets for directly preventing metastasis initiation and progression.

Listed skills include Experimental Biomedical Research, Stem Cells, Regenerative Medicine, Developmental Biology, and 16 others.