Dr. Danh Truong

Instructor

I study bone and soft tissue sarcoma at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Given over 100 different sarcoma subtypes, my range of scope is narrowed to desmoplastic small round cell tumors, Ewing sarcoma, and liposarcoma. To that end, my approach has been to comprehensively characterize these disease entities through a multi-modal omics approach using single-cell/nucleus RNA- and/or ATAC-sequencing, spatial transcriptomics/proteomics. Second, we aim to dissect biology and tumor microenvironment and determine signatures or drivers of tumorigenesis that could enable therapeutic targeted therapies. Third, instead of systemic cytotoxic therapies, we aim to propose methods to repair cancer cells. I am developing a mesenchymal stem cell differentiation model to determine the regulators that promote differentiation toward osteoblasts, myoblasts, and adipocytes. My hypothesis is that studying the regulators of differentiation can help us infer and target the error in differentiation amongst different sarcomas with possible mesenchymal origins.