Researcher profile

Jared Barrott

Dr. Barrott’s diverse training in multiple research disciplines (i.e. developmental genetics and cancer pharmacology) and top-quality pedagogical training will not only help him to accomplish his scientific aspirations but will help him to teach students and trainees so they can achieve theirs. He has a particular interest in the personalized approaches of treating cancer because it interweaves two disciplines that he is very passionate about: pharmacology and genetics. Many clinical efforts are already being made to produce genetic profiles for individual patients that expose the driving mutations of the cancer. However, the complexity of cancer in its heterogeneity and temporal regulation make it difficult to assign effective treatments to a single snapshot obtained by the current diagnostic techniques. One way to simplify our understanding of pharmacogenomics is to study disease models that are driven by very few genetic alterations. Pediatric sarcomas are examples of these minimally mutated cancers. Dr. Barrott studies chromosomal translocations and point mutations that represent the major driver mutations behind sarcomagenesis. His lab is designing disease models that will allow them to evaluate the epigenetic regulations in several sarcomas. In studying the epigenetic regulations in these genetically simple pediatric tumors, they hope to delineate druggable enzymes that should advance treatment for pediatric sarcomas that are currently lacking effective treatments.