Baylor College of Medicine News

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Helen E. Heslop, M.D., D.Sc. (Hon)

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Helen E. Heslop, M.D., D.Sc. (Hon)
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Director, Center for Cell and Gene Therapy

Dr. Helen E. Heslop, a professor in the departments of medicine and pediatrics at Baylor, oversees the program that includes Texas Children’s Hospital and Houston Methodist Hospital. She was named director of the center in 2016, after serving as interim director beginning in 2013.

A physician-scientist, she is engaged in translational research focusing on adoptive immunotherapy with gene-modified effector cells to improve hemopoietic stem cell transplantation and cancer therapy. She also serves as associate director of clinical research at the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor and director of the Adult Stem Cell Transplant Program at Houston Methodist.

She received her M.D. from the University Of Otago, New Zealand.

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Amy L. McGuire, J.D., Ph.D.

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Amy L. McGuire, J.D., Ph.D.
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Director, Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy

Dr. Amy L. McGuire, associate professor of medicine and medical ethics, is the director of the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine. She was awarded the Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P. Faculty Excellence Award for Education Leadership and the Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P. Faculty Excellence Award for Teaching and Evaluation, is a member of the Baylor College of Medicine Academy of Distinguished Educators, and is a member of the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research at the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. McGuire received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, summa cum laude, her J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center, summa cum laude, and her Ph.D., with distinction, from the Institute for Medical Humanities at The University of Texas Medical Branch.

Her research focuses on legal and ethical issues in genomics. She is currently studying participant attitudes toward genomic data sharing, investigators’ practices and perspectives on the return of genetic research results, ethical issues in human microbiome research, and ethical and policy issues related to the clinical integration of genomics.

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Pavan Reddy, M.D.

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Dr. Pavan Reddy
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Director, Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center

Dr. Pavan Reddy is the director of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center. He also leads oncology services, research and strategic growth at Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center. Dr. Reddy specializes in hematological malignancies, and his research spans basic immunology to translational proof-of-concept clinical trials to improve outcomes after allogeneic hematopoietic transplantation.

Dr. Reddy earned his medical degree from Osmania Medical College in India. He completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Missouri, Columbia and fellowships in hematology-oncology and blood and bone marrow transplantation at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

His work has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health for 20 years and by other foundations like the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the National Marrow Donor Program and the American Society of Transplantation. His more than 200 original research articles have been published in Nature Medicine, Nature Immunology, the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Lancet Oncology, Blood and PNAS.

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Hui Zheng, Ph.D.

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Hui Zheng, Ph.D.
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Director, Huffington Center on Aging

In addition to serving as director of the Huffington Center on Aging, Dr. Hui Zheng is a professor in the departments of Molecular and Human Genetics,Molecular & Cellular Biology and Neuroscience. She received her Ph.D. at Baylor College of Medicine. She is interested in understanding the pathophysiology of amyloid precursor protein (APP) and presenilins (PS) and developing a mouse model that recapitulates Alzheimer’s disease pathogenic process.

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Richard A. Gibbs, Ph.D.

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Richard A. Gibbs, Ph.D.
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Director, Human Genome Sequencing Center

Dr. Richard A. Gibbs, is director of the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center and the Wofford Cain Professor in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics.

Gibbs received a B.Sc. (Hons) in 1979 and a Ph.D. in genetics and radiation biology in 1986 at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. He moved to Houston as a postdoctoral fellow at Baylor to study the molecular basis of human-linked diseases and to develop technologies for rapid genetic analysis.

He joined the Baylor faculty in 1991 and established the Human Genome Sequencing Center in 1996. In 2000, Gibbs was a recipient of the annual Michael E. DeBakey, M.D., Excellence in Research Awards.

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Christopher Amos, Ph.D.

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Christopher Amos, Ph.D.
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Director, Institute for Clinical and Translational Research

Dr. Christopher Amos joined Baylor as the director of the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR) Nov. 1, 2017. He is also serving as the associate director for quantitative science for the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Dr. Amos received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1985 and 1988 from the Louisiana State University Medical Center in New Orleans from the Department of Biometry and Genetics.  In 1992, he was recruited to the MD Anderson Cancer Center, where he joined the Department of Epidemiology and established the Section of Computational and Genetic Epidemiology.

In 2012, Dr. Amos moved to the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College, where he became the inaugural chair for the Department of Biomedical Data Science, which includes Divisions of Biostatistics, Biomedical Informatics and Behavioral Studies.   

While at Dartmouth, Dr. Amos served as leader of the Biostatistics Epidemiology and Research Design component of the Clinical and Translational Institute at Dartmouth College, and directed the biomedical informatics team. In addition, Dr. Amos led a T32 training grant at Dartmouth funded by the Knowledge to Big Data initiative for training graduate students in biomedical data sciences. 

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Xiang Zhang, Ph.D.

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Dr. Xiang Zhang, assistant professor in the Smith Breast Center and a McNair Scholar in breast cancer
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Director, Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center

Dr. Xiang Zhang, is the director of the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center at Baylor College of Medicine. He joined Baylor in June 2011 when he was recruited and appointed a McNair Scholar. His lab focuses on interactions between tumors and connective tissue cells in the metastasis of breast cancer. Additionally, Zhang’s research has contributed to understanding the changes that occur to the therapeutic profile of the cell when it metastasizes, prompting clinicians to tailor the types of therapies used to better treat the patient.

Prior to his appointment at Baylor, he was a research associate in the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he conducted research since 2006. He received a bachelor's of science degree in genetics and genetic engineering from Fudan University in Shanghai and a doctorate from Columbia University. It was after receiving his doctorate that he decided to focus on breast cancer in his post-doctoral research.

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Jeffrey P. Sutton, M.D., Ph.D.

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Jeffrey P. Sutton, M.D., Ph.D.
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President and Institute Director, National Space Biomedical Research Institute

Director, Center for Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine 
Friedkin Chair for Research in Sensory System Integration and Space Medicine

Dr. Jeffrey P. Sutton was appointed president and institute director of NSBRI in 2001. He is also professor of Medicine and director of the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Sutton holds an M.D. degree, a M.Sc. in medical science (neuroscience) and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Toronto. His residency training was at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Sutton's career spans research, education, clinical care and administration. He has made contributions to the fields of computational neuroscience, neuroimaging and smart medical systems. In 1995, he founded the Neural Systems Group at the Massachusetts General Hospital and has been a faculty member of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology since that time. He has been instrumental in developing innovative research and education programs at NSBRI and in establishing the Baylor College of Medicine Center for Space Medicine in 2008. Dr. Sutton's academic leadership is internationally acclaimed, and he has received numerous awards for his achievements, including the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, an NIH Career Scientist Development Award and the President's Citation from the Society of NASA Flight Surgeons.

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Cheryl Lyn Walker, Ph.D.

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Cheryl Lyn Walker, Ph.D.
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Director, Precision Environmental Health Center

Dr. Cheryl Lyn Walker is director of the Precision Environmental Health Center and professor of cellular and molecular biology.

Before coming to Baylor, Walker was the Robert A. Welch Professor, a Distinguished University Professor and director of the Institute of Biosciences and Technology at Texas A&M. Prior to that she held positions with The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center including as the Ruth and Walter Sterling Professor of Carcinogenesis. She also was on faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Walker earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colo. She earned her Ph.D. at The University of Texas Health Science Center, Southwest Medical School in Dallas. Among her numerous awards and recognitions are the Cozzarelli Prize in Biological Sciences from the National Academy of Sciences and the Society of Toxicology Leading Edge in Basic Science Award. She also is a past-president of the Society of Toxicology and Women in Cancer Research of the American Association for Cancer Research.