Dr. Heather Christofk is Associate Director of Basic and Translational Research at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is a Professor of Biological Chemistry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Co-Director of the UCLA Metabolomics Center. Dr. Christofk earned her bachelor’s degree at UCLA and Ph.D. at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the role of metabolism in cancer, development, and tissue stem cells, with the goal of using this knowledge to develop novel treatment strategies for patients. She is a Searle Scholar and recipient of the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award from the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, and an American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award. Along with Drs. Bill Lowry and Mike Jung at UCLA, Dr. Christofk co-founded Pelage Pharmaceuticals, a company developing new treatments for hair loss that stimulate hair follicle stem cell activation by changing their metabolism. Along with clinical collaborator Dr. Brian Shuch at UCLA, Dr. Christofk has discovered a new promising treatment strategy for patients with a hereditary cancer syndrome called Hereditary Leiomyomatosis and Renal Cell Cancer.
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