Shailesh Singh
Morehouse School of Medicine, GA·Medicine & Clinical Research
African Americans are more likely than other groups to develop lung cancer and are more likely to die from it, often because their disease is more aggressive. This project asks why.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Microbiology & Immunology
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
lung cancer
cancer health disparities
African American
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2027
What they work on
- Establish whether signaling between the CCR6 receptor and its chemokine partner CCL20 is associated with non-small cell lung cancer aggressiveness and therapeutic response in African American and European American patients.
- Ascertain race-specific differences in the immune landscape of NSCLC tumors that may contribute to outcome disparities between African American and European American patients.
- Determine how social stress, including stress-related elevation of the hormone cortisol and neighborhood-level factors, affects immune signatures in African American and European American NSCLC patients.
More about the research
It looks at both molecular features of the tumors and social factors such as stress and neighborhood conditions, comparing African American (AA) and European American (EA) patients. The focus is non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which makes up about 85% of lung cancers and drives much of the difference in outcomes.
Why it matters
African American patients with non-small cell lung cancer face higher incidence and poorer survival. This work could lead to a non-invasive chemokine-based test that flags aggressive tumors early and to patient grouping by CCR6 profile, so that chemokine-targeted therapies and clinical trials better match patient subgroups. It may also inform social and clinical interventions that strengthen anti-tumor immunity and reduce disparities.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Joshua Campbell
Boston University, MA·Genetics
Identify genetic alterations linked to tumor grade by whole exome sequencing of archived prostate cancers from 300 African American and 200 European American men from Boston Medical Center and UCSF.
Ramesh Ganju
Ohio State University, OH·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how S100A7 signaling controls genes that respond to interferon-gamma, especially PD-L1 and Fas, in African American TNBC cells and in engineered mice that overproduce mouse S100a7.
David Tweardy
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine whether the STAT3 inhibitor TTI-101, alone or combined with anti-PD-1 antibody, treats lung tumors effectively in the K-ras mutant CC-LR mouse model of non-small cell lung cancer.
The school
Morehouse School of Medicine: 3 labs on PI Pages, $69M a year on research, 7 research doctorates a year.
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