Lab Members
Chibawanye I. Ene, M.D., Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
Assistant Professor, Neurosurgery
Dr. Ene is a physician-scientist with a clinical focus on complex brain tumors and research expertise in the field of immuno-oncology, particularly macrophage based therapeutic approaches for brain tumors.
He received his M.D. from Indiana University School of Medicine and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Cambridge University, where he explored epigenetics of neural and cancer stem cells. He subsequently completed his residency in neurosurgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine, during which he developed novel mouse models to study brain tumor immunity.
Dr. Ene completed a fellowship in neurosurgical oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2022, distinguishing himself both as a surgeon and scientist and joined the faculty the same year.
His surgical practice primarily focuses on advanced neurosurgical procedures for primary and metastatic tumors of the brain and spine. Therapeutic strategies that he develops in his laboratory will eventually be brought to the clinic.
Yanxia Ma, M.D., Ph.D.
Research Scientist
Yanxia Ma received her medical degree (M.D.) from Jilin University in China. She then completed her master of science (M.Sc.) in pharmacology of anti-cancer drugs at Peking University in China. She received her Ph.D. in medical science from The University of Tokyo in Japan. Her doctoral research focused on autoimmune diseases and novel anti-cancer targets. Dr. Ma completed her post-doctoral fellowship with Powel Brown, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chairman, Department of Clinical Cancer Prevention, and joined the Ene Lab in 2023. In the lab, she spearheads our genetically modified macrophage and CRISPR Cas9 in-vivo projects.
Nhat Nguyen
Research Assistant
Nhat Nguyen received her bachelor of science in biological and physical sciences at the University of Houston - Downtown in May 2019. Before joining the Ene lab in 2023, she worked as an animal technician in veterinary medicine and surgery at MD Anderson Cancer Center. She also worked as a research assistant in the Department of Leukemia, where she assisted with experiments using preclinical mouse models for leukemia. In the lab, she manages our genetically modified mouse colonies and performs in-vivo treatments for preclinical studies. Her research focus is characterizing resistance mechanisms (checkpoint activation) to Delta-24RGD Oncolytic viruses.