Sunday Akintoye
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Ameloblastoma is a jaw tumor that arises from tooth-forming tissue. It makes up 14% of odontogenic tumors, which are tumors that come from tooth-forming cells.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biology
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
ameloblastoma
odontogenic tumors
jaw tumors
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2026
What they work on
- Determine whether autophagy proteins such as LC3, p62, and BECLIN1 act as cancer-promoting factors linked to racial disparity, aggressive behavior, and recurrence in ameloblastoma tissues from Black and White patients.
- Test whether invasive ameloblastoma cells left after surgery survive through LC3-associated phagocytosis, involving the protein RUBICON, by engulfing other cells and recycling energy-rich components, using ameloblastoma cell lines.
- Identify prognostic biomarkers that predict ameloblastoma recurrence, drawing on a large tumor tissue cohort and epithelial- and mesenchymal-derived BRAF V600E-positive cell lines.
More about the research
African Americans are five times more likely than White Americans to develop it. Even after major surgery, 10% of these tumors return, and a quarter of recurrences occur in Black patients. No one knows the biological reasons for this disparity, and no markers exist to predict which tumors will come back.
Why it matters
Patients with ameloblastoma, especially Black patients, who face higher rates and more recurrences, could benefit from markers that predict which tumors will return after surgery. Understanding how autophagy helps leftover tumor cells survive may point to precision-guided therapies for ameloblastoma and other BRAF-mutant tumors. This could help reduce racial disparities in treatment outcomes.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Erin Peckham-Gregory
Baylor College of Medicine, TX·Genetics
Analyze germline whole-genome sequencing data from 191 LCH case-parent trios in the Gabriella Miller Kids First program to define inheritance patterns and the role of de novo mutations in LCH risk.
Jerry Chipuk
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Biology
Determine how cancer-gene signaling from BRAF V600E or mutant NRAS switches on the ATF5-dependent mitochondrial unfolded protein response, a mitochondrial stress alarm, during senescence in primary human melanocytes.
Miqin Zhang
University of Washington, WA·Biomedical Engineering
Test how the composition and stiffness of chitosan–alginate (CA) scaffolds control human induced pluripotent stem cell self-renewal, and whether optimized scaffolds support long-term growth of tooth epithelial stem cells and neural crest cells.
The school
University of Pennsylvania: 90 labs on PI Pages, $2.2B a year on research, 750 research doctorates a year.
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