I am a clinically active physician trained in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. My laboratory research focuses on understanding the capacity of different types of healthy lung cells to transform into lung cancer. We use both mouse models and patient specimens to study how different lung cell types respond to particular mutations. We seek to uncover why certain cells are susceptible while others are resistant to becoming cancerous. By identifying the specific molecular factors and cell states that enable or inhibit a specific mutation from initiating a lung tumor or allowing it to spread, we can devise new precision treatments that can have potent anti-tumor effects by modulating these factors or states. Such therapies can be used in combination with existing drugs that target the mutation driving the lung cancer or conventional chemotherapies that eliminate the rapidly dividing cancer cells. Importantly, molecular factors that significantly impact tumor growth may be produced by non-cancer cells within or close to the tumor. Such cells may be less likely to develop drug resistance than the rapidly dividing cancer cells themselves. Our ultimate goal is to devise multi-pronged therapeutic regimens that can eliminate or halt the progression of lung cancers by combining such precision medications with already established anti-tumor treatments.