Khandan Keyomarsi

Khandan Keyomarsi is a High Senior Professor at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Her research focuses on breast cancer biology, cell cycle dysregulation, and targeted therapeutics, with a particular emphasis on CDK2 and CDK4/6 inhibitor resistance mechanisms. Her recent work has identified IL-6/STAT3 signaling as a predictive biomarker for CDK4/6 inhibitor resistance and demonstrated that CDK2 inhibition synergizes with CDK4/6 inhibitors in drug-resistant breast cancers through p21/p27 induction. She has also uncovered FGFR3-induced PARP1 phosphorylation as a novel mechanism of PARP inhibitor resistance. Her translational research includes phase I clinical trials combining hydroxychloroquine with palbociclib and letrozole in ER+/HER2− breast cancer, and she has published extensively in Nature Communications, Molecular Cancer, and the Journal of Clinical Investigation.