Randall J. Kimple, PhD, MD

Associate Professor of Human Oncology

The ultimate goal of the Kimple lab is to improve treatment outcomes for cancer patients. They pursue this goal by studying the molecular mechanisms leading to increased sensitivity to therapy in HPV-positive cancers and studying how to target therapeutic resistance in head and neck cancer. Alex Torres Law, a predoc VTG URM trainee, began her training in the Kimple lab and contributed to studies showing that HPV-positive head and neck cancers exhibit increased sensitivity to radiation (Kimple et al., Cancer Research 2013, PMID: 23749640) and that HPV E7 causes a delay in repair of DNA damage (Park et al., Radiother Oncol. 2014, PMID: 25216575) as well as the generation and characterization of head and neck cancer patient-derived xenografts (Kimple et al., Clinical Cancer Research 2013, PMID: 23251001). Dr. Jaimee Eckers Kubatzke, a recent postdoc VTG trainee in Dr. Kimple’s lab, started as an Assistant Professor of Biology at Rockford in September 2018. She will be a first author on a manuscript that is currently in preparation and co-author of a book chapter entitled “Targeting Autophagy to Overcome Resistance to Therapy in Head and Neck Cancer”. Dr. Kimple collaborates with Drs. Ahlquist, Carchman, and Lambert. Dr. Kimple is co-leader of the Carbone Cancer Center’s Imaging and Radiation Sciences Program. He received two awards over the past year for excellence in teaching and mentoring. His laboratory is funded by an American Cancer Society Research Scholar Grant (PI), and the UW Head and Neck Cancer SPORE (co-leader of Project 4 and the Pathology Core).