DiGiovanni, John

• Adjunct Professor, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Professor and Chair
• Ph.D., Washington School of Medicine, Seattle
• NTR
•  
• Office Number: 512-471-1737
• Fax: 512-471-4661
• Loading...
•  
•  
• Publications

Areas of Major Interest

Epithelial carcinogenesis, oncogenes, growth factors, transgenic models and cancer prevention.

Education and Previous Positions

    Dr. DiGiovanni earned his BS in Pharmacy and his Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle.  He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin and worked at The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia before being recruited to The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.    Now professor and chair of the Department of Carcinogenesis, he directs M.D. Anderson’s Science Park ��" Research Division and the National Institute of Environmental Health Science’s Center for Research on Environmental Disease located there.  He is an active faculty member at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in Houston, adjunct professor in the department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at The University of Texas at Austin, adjunct professor and member of the Graduate Studies Committee in the Department of Human Ecology, Division of Natural Science at The University of Texas at Austin, and a visiting member of the graduate faculty of Texas A&M University’s Department of Veterinary Physiology and Pharmacology.  He holds the J. Ralph Meadows Chair in Carcinogenesis Research at the Science Park ��" Research Division.

    Dr. DiGiovanni is a recognized expert in the field of chemical carcinogenesis and particularly multistage carcinogenesis using the mouse skin model.  His research accomplishments have spanned the fields of metabolism and metabolic activation of polycyclic hydrocarbon (PAH) carcinogens, PAH DNA adduct chemistry, PAH-induced macromolecular damage and mutagenesis, and more recently in understanding signaling pathways related to chemically-induced cell proliferation and tumor promotion.  In recent years, Dr. DiGiovanni has been using transgenic approaches both for addressing mechanistic questions about signal transduction pathways and carcinogenesis, but also for developing new animal models of human cancer.  Dr. DiGiovanni has had an interest in chemoprevention for many years.  He is currently studying dietary energy balance and its impact on skin and prostate carcinogenesis and also several potential chemopreventive agents using the two-stage skin carcinogenesis model.