Michael Oldham, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Neurological Surgery, UCSF
Associate Professor, Department of Neurological Surgery, UCSF
I am a neuroscientist and Principal Investigator in the Department of Neurological Surgery and Brain Tumor Center at UCSF. The overarching goal of my lab’s research is to understand the molecular basis of cellular identity in the human brain in health and disease, with an emphasis on adult malignant gliomas. In pursuit of this goal, we develop and apply novel experimental, computational, and meta-analytical strategies for studying omics data from normal human brain and brain tumor samples. Because gene expression lies at the root of cellular identity, much of our work focuses on understanding the organization of the normal human brain transcriptome and how this is perturbed by oncogenic mutations. Specifically, current work in the lab seeks to clarify: i) how patterns of clonal evolution in gliomas drive gene expression changes in malignant cells, and ii) which molecular phenotypes most consistently distinguish cell types in the glioma microenvironment from their normal counterparts, with a particular focus on vascular cells. Through these efforts, we hope to expand the therapeutic search space for malignant gliomas.
Duke University B.S., 1996, Psychology
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Ph.D., 2009, Neuroscience
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Postdoctoral, 2010, Human Genetics