Lab Members

Joseph McCarty, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator

Joseph McCarty, Ph.D., came to MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2005 as an assistant professor in Cancer Biology. In 2013 he took a position as associate professor in Neurosurgery to expound upon his interest in brain tumor research and was promoted to professor in 2018. He currently serves as the Principal Investigator for a NIH/NINDS funded project "Deciphering Mechanisms of Tumor Cell Invasion in Glioblastoma" and was one of the 2014 Developmental Research Project recipients for the Brain Cancer SPORE, through which he is researching the effects of "Targeting Spinophilin in Glioblastoma."

In 2006 Dr. McCarty was awarded the New Scholar Award in Aging from the Ellison Medical Foundation and in 2008 the Career Development Award from MD Anderson Cancer Center Brain Cancer SPORE under the guidance of Principal Investigator W.K. Alfred Yung, M.D. Dr. McCarty is also a member of the Brain Tumor Research Program at MD Anderson Cancer Center, the Center for Stem Cell and Development Biology and the Cancer Metastasis Research Center.

Zhihua (Jenny) Chen, M.D., M.S.
Senior Research Scientist

Zhihua Chen received her master's degree in immunology from the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology and M.D. from the Third Military Medical University in China. From 2003-2009, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Her research focused on understanding the molecular mechanism of extracellular matrix molecules related to tumor invasion and metastasis. Prior to joining the McCarty Laboratory in 2014, she was as a research associate at the Institute of Molecular Medicine - UTHealth Science Center at Houston (2009-2014), where she was involved in projects related to neurodegenerative disorders. In particular, she used genetic and molecular approaches in Drosophila and cell culture systems to discover the disease-causative genes in Huntington’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

John Morales, B.S. 
Laboratory Manager

John Morales received his bachelor's degree in biochemistry from The University of Texas at Austin. Before coming to MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2013 as a Senior Research Assistant in the McCarty Lab, John worked as a research assistant for 11 years at The University of Texas in the Rick Wetsel, Ph.D., Immunology Lab.

Arpan De, Ph.D.
Research Scientist

Arpan De received his bachelor and master of science degrees in microbiology from University of Calcutta, India, and worked on a research project funded by Department of Biotechnology, Government of India to investigate novel coordination metal complexes as potential anti-leishmanial agents. He moved to Bowling Green State University, Ohio, where he received his master’s degree in biological sciences in 2015 with research focus on understanding the role of rho-family guanosine triphosphatase effectors in filopodia dynamics. Arpan earned his Ph.D. in biological sciences from Bowling Green State University in 2019 where his graduate research focused on exploring circadian clock regulation of epithelial-mesenchymal and mesenchymal-epithelial transitions in glioma and breast cancer cells. He joined the McCarty lab in October 2019.

Tae Hoon Lee, Ph.D.
Research Investigator

Dr. Lee received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Yonsei University, South Korea, where his graduate work focused on the functional analysis of proteins controlling mitochondrial morphology in Caenorhabditis elegans. During his postdoctoral fellow and research associate at the Houston Methodist Research Institute and Baylor College of Medicine, he performed research in various fields – Immunology, Cancer imaging, Neuroregeneration, and Nephrology. Dr. Lee joined the McCarty Lab in May 2024, and his current research focuses on therapeutically targeting brain metastases and endothelial blood-brain barrier integrity by activating endothelial gene expression.            

Ali Mohammed Pirani
Data Scientist

Ali earned his Master of Science degree in Bioinformatics from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Before transitioning into bioinformatics, he worked as a software engineer specializing in web application development. He later joined Dr. Evan Snitkin's lab at the University of Michigan, where he developed computational analysis pipelines to study the epidemiology and evolution of drug-resistant microbes, integrating genomics, metagenomics, and clinical phenotypic data from large cohort studies. Currently, as a data scientist, Ali focuses on integrating bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing with spatial transcriptomics to study glioblastoma, aiming to uncover tumor-intrinsic and microenvironmental signatures driving tumor heterogeneity and evolution. By applying spatial statistical models and machine learning approaches, he investigates cell-cell communication and neuronal interactions within the tumor microenvironment, with the goal of identifying prognostic markers and therapeutic targets for GBM progression and recurrence.

Sumod Sebastian, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr. Sebastian received his Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in biotechnology from Bangalore University, India. He received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from Texas Woman's University in 2019 where his dissertation research was focused on drug release kinetics and blood-brain barrier crossing efficacy of polymer encapsulated magnetic nanocarriers. Sumod joined the McCarty Laboratory in February 2020. His current research focuses on understanding the roles of endothelial transporter proteins and vascular basement membrane proteins in maintaining blood-brain barrier integrity during development, physiology and cancer. 

Zahra Nassiri Toosi, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr. Toosi received her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran. Her dissertation research was focused on investigating the pharmacokinetic parameters of sublingual versus oral tacrolimus administration in liver transparent recipients. After moving to the U.S., she joined the Molecular and Cell Biology graduate program at Georgia Institute of Technology and received a Ph.D. in the spring of 2021. Dr. Toosi's doctoral research was centered on studying the regulatory roles of post-translational modifications on G-protein signaling systems. Using yeast as a model organism, she investigated the structural and functional effects of multi-site phosphorylation on the intrinsically disordered N-terminal tail of the G-protein gamma subunit in the G-protein signaling system. In June 2021, she joined the McCarty Laboratory. 

Tao Wang, M.D., Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr. Wang received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Fudan University in 2018. He has been working as an attending neurosurgeon in China for about 10 years. Dr. Wang’s research has been focused on USP8 mutations in Cushing’s disease and GPR68 in ischemic stroke. With a strong interest in glioblastoma research, Dr. Wang joined the McCarty Lab in June 2023. 

Santiago A. Forero
Senior Research Assistant

Santiago A. Forero received his bachelor’s degree in biomedical sciences from Texas A&M University, where he began his research as an undergraduate researcher in the Behavioral Ecology and Evolutionary Genetics Lab of Dr. Gil Rosenthal. He went on to earn his master’s and doctoral degrees at Cornell University as part of Dr. Alex Ophir’s neuroethology lab, where his research focused on uncovering the neural mechanisms underlying social behavior in the socially monogamous prairie vole. Santiago joined the McCarty Lab in January 2024 and will contribute to the lab’s ongoing research of characterizing neurovascular development and physiology. 

Zach Wise
Research Assistant II

Zach Wise received his bachelor's degree in psychology from Texas A&M University. While at Texas A&M, he worked as an undergraduate research assistant in the Anderson Learning and Attention Lab under Brian Anderson, Ph.D. Zach went on to work in the BRAINS lab at UTHealth under Gab Seok Kim, Ph.D. There he studied the role of Ifi27l2a in regulating inflammation in the context of stroke, aging, and Alzheimer's Disease. He joined the McCarty lab in
January, 2024.