Center for Cancer Systems Biology

Vito Quaranta, MD, trained in cell biology and immunology, is the Director of the Quantitative Systems Biology Center, and Professor of Biochemistry and Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Having studied cancer and the tumor microenvironment for most of his career, for over a decade he has been implementing cutting-edge interdisciplinary efforts melding mathematics, engineering, computation and biology to solve the problem of cancer invasion and metastasis. He has co-developed multiscale mathematical models that predict tumor aggressiveness based on the physical properties of extracellular matrix and adhesive properties of cancer cells. Dr. Quaranta has established single-cell techniques to quantify the rate of proliferation of single cells in response to perturbations (e.g., Fractional Proliferation), which can be applied in high-throughput fashion to measure the dynamics of cancer cell response to drugs. He is also expert in single-cell methodologies to evaluate mechanism of action of cancer targeted therapy, based on the merging of automated time-lapse microscopy with image analysis and computational modeling. To explore the roots of differential cell behavior and tumor heterogeneity, Dr. Quaranta studies the dynamics of transcription factor and signaling networks that define and maintain cell identity, and ultimately contribute to forming the phenotypic landscape of the tumor microenvironment.