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Ben Gibbs

Professional Background

I grew up in Saint Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. After graduating high school, I enrolled at the University of Wisconsin - Madison where I graduated with honors in chemistry and received a certificate in physics (similar to a minor). I worked in the lab of Dr. Joshua Lang, a genitourinary oncologist, where my passion for medicine and cancer research grew. Our work specialized in fluid biopsies for characterization of malignancies. More specifically, we developed a microfluidic device known as the VERSA (Versatile Exclusion-based Rare Sample Analysis). With this device, we were able to isolate circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from blood from patients with melanoma, prostate cancer and clear cell renal cancer. With the cells isolated we were able to analyze proteins by immunofluorescence microscopy. In this lab, I wrote my senior thesis titled "Development of a Platform for Molecular Analysis of Circulating Melanoma Cells" and won several awards including the American Association for Cancer Research Thomas J. Bardos Science Education Award.

After graduating from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, I joined the lab of Dr. Marston Linehan at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD. Dr. Linehan's lab is centered around translating new findings in renal cancer and bringing new drugs to the clinic. While at the NCI, I have worked primarily on a new class of cancer therapeutics called metabolic inhibitors. The metabolism of cancer cells, especially renal cancers, change relative to normal tissue. The idea is to exploit this change to create an environment that is synthetically lethal for these cells.

Currently, I work in Andrew Godwin’s laboratory where I focus on developing novel therapies for the treatment of ovarian cancer. More specifically, I am trying to develop a first-in-class drug that causes mitotic catastrophe by concurrently inhibiting two essential mitotic kinesins. This project has started at the beginning of identifying a target and making a high throughput screen to identify potential compounds. These compounds are being further optimized for further development. Additionally, I am working on establishing a library advanced cancer cell models referred as organoids. Organoids are cell models cultured in dishes that closely resemble the physiology and microanatomy of their parental tissues. Lastly, our lab works on the biology of small extracellular vesicles as potential markers of early disease, residual/recurrent disease, predicting effective therapeutic approaches and the targeted delivery of therapeutics.

Mentor: Andrew Godwin, Ph.D., Pathology & Laboratory Medicine


KU School of Medicine

University of Kansas Medical Center
M.D.-Ph.D. Physician Scientist Program
Mail Stop 3062
1123 Delp Pavilion

3901 Rainbow Boulevard
Kansas City, Kansas 66103