Lab Members
Principal Investigator
Wendy A. Woodward M.D., Ph.D.
Email: wwoodward@mdanderson.org
Woodward graduated from Mount Holyoke College, S. Hadley, MA, in 1993. In 2000, she received her M.D. as well as her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Thomas Jefferson University/Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, PA. She did her internship in medicine at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, PA followed by radiation oncology residency at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center which she completed in 2005. During that time she did a one year fellowship on breast cancer stem cells in the laboratory of Jeff Rosen, Ph.D., at Baylor College of Medicine. She then joined the faculty at MD Anderson Cancer Center and is currently a board certified Associate Professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology on the breast cancer service and Deputy Director of the Morgan Welch Inflammatory Breast Cancer Program.
Lab Members
Wei Xu, Ph.D.
Email: xuwei@mdanderson.org
Xu completed his undergraduate degree at Fudan University (Shanghai, China) in 1992 and received his Ph.D. Degree in Pharmacology and Toxicology in 2007 from University of Arizona. During his Ph.D. studies, he investigated the signal transduction pathways of FP receptor, the receptor for PGF2α.. Wei joined Woodward’s lab in 2007. He is working on the identification of compounds specifically targeting breast cancer stem cells by inhibition of WNT signaling.
Jessica Li
Email: LiLi@mdanderson.org
Li was born in China, and received her Bachelor’s degree in 1988. Her current research focuses on the radiation resistance in cancer stem cells. She has been in the Woodward lab since 2006.
Richard Larson
Email: ralarson@mdanderson.org
Larson is a native Houstonian. He received his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Houston in 2005. Following his Bachelor’s degree he then obtained his Master’s Degree in Zoology University of Texas Tech in August of 2010. He has been working with the Woodward Lab since June 2010.
Dan Smith
Email: DLSmith2@mdanderson.org
Smith received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Notre Dame (IN) in 2010, where he studied Physics-in-Medicine. He is currently affiliated with the medical physics and cancer biology doctoral programs in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at MD Anderson Cancer Center. His research interests include tracking cancer stem cells in vivo using both optical and radiotracer methods, and further exploring cancer stem cell radiobiology.
Adam Wolfe
Email: Adam.R.Wolfe@uth.tmc.edu
Wolfe received a Bachelor of Science degree from the Texas Tech University, graduating magna cum laude in Cell and Molecular Biology. He has completed three years of medical school and is currently studying in the M.D./Ph.D. program at UT Houston Medical School and UT Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at MD Anderson. His research interests include discovering new treatment options for inflammatory breast cancer such as adding statins to radiation therapy. He plans to pursue a medical residency in Radiation Oncology.