Speaker

Thales Papagiannakopoulos earned his Ph.D. with Dr. Ken Kosik at UC Santa Barbara (2005–2010), studying microRNA regulation of stem cell pluripotency and cancer. As a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Tyler Jacks at MIT, he pioneered CRISPR/Cas9-based somatic genome engineering in lung cancer mouse models. In 2015, he joined NYU School of Medicine as Assistant Professor of Pathology, later earning tenure as Associate Professor. In 2026, he became Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

His lab integrates molecular genetics, metabolism, and systemic physiology to uncover how tumors communicate with and remodel their host environment, locally through immune and stromal interactions, and systemically through effects on distant organs and behavior. His team has defined how KEAP1/NRF2 and LKB1 mutations drive metabolic rewiring and immune evasion in aggressive, treatment-resistant lung cancers.

Most recently, his group discovered a neurophysiological axis of cancer, showing that tumors hijack peripheral sensory neurons and central brain circuits to drive anorexia, sickness behavior, and cachexia, reframing cancer as a systemic disease that exploits brain–body communication to control host metabolism and behavior.

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