Asfar S. Azmi, PhD
Dr. Azmi’s laboratory works on drug discovery and translational therapeutics for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors — work that helped bring a first-in-class drug to FDA approval.
Overview
Dr. Asfar Azmi is a Professor of Oncology at the Wayne State University School of Medicine and Director of Pancreas Cancer Research at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in Detroit.
Scientific focus
His research targets the molecular mechanisms driving pancreatic cancer growth and therapeutic resistance: aberrant nuclear protein transport and its role in drug resistance, KRAS-driven oncogenic signalling and its pathway vulnerabilities, nuclear export inhibition using small-molecule inhibitors, and next-generation targeted drugs for PDAC and PNETs.
Discoveries and drug development
He led pioneering work identifying nuclear export inhibition as a strategy to overcome chemoresistance in pancreatic cancer, and contributed to the pre-clinical and early-phase clinical development of selinexor (KPT-330), a first-in-class selective inhibitor of nuclear export. His team’s work contributed directly to selinexor’s FDA approval across multiple tumor indications.
This committee member has also received Sky seed funding — recused, of course, from any discussion of their own proposal.
See the research →Nine physicians, researchers and staff who decide what Sky funds.
Back to the SAC →Asfar S. Azmi, PhD
Dr. Azmi’s laboratory works on drug discovery and translational therapeutics for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors — work that helped bring a first-in-class drug to FDA approval.
Overview
Dr. Asfar Azmi is a Professor of Oncology at the Wayne State University School of Medicine and Director of Pancreas Cancer Research at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in Detroit.
Scientific focus
His research targets the molecular mechanisms driving pancreatic cancer growth and therapeutic resistance: aberrant nuclear protein transport and its role in drug resistance, KRAS-driven oncogenic signalling and its pathway vulnerabilities, nuclear export inhibition using small-molecule inhibitors, and next-generation targeted drugs for PDAC and PNETs.
Discoveries and drug development
He led pioneering work identifying nuclear export inhibition as a strategy to overcome chemoresistance in pancreatic cancer, and contributed to the pre-clinical and early-phase clinical development of selinexor (KPT-330), a first-in-class selective inhibitor of nuclear export. His team’s work contributed directly to selinexor’s FDA approval across multiple tumor indications.
This committee member has also received Sky seed funding — recused, of course, from any discussion of their own proposal.
See the research →Nine physicians, researchers and staff who decide what Sky funds.
Back to the SAC →