UASOM Faculty Profiles


Name	AKINYEMI I OJESINA Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology Associate Scientist, O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center Adjunct Faculty Investigator, HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology
Campus Address	RPHB 230L Zip 0022
Phone	(205) 934-7911
E-mail	ojesina@uab.edu
Other websites

Medical School

University of Ibadan

1998

M.B.,B.S. (M.D. equivalent)

Graduate

Harvard University

2007

Ph.D.

Appointment Type

Department

Division

Rank

Center

Assistant Professor

Center

Comp Arthritis, MSK, Bone & Autoimmunity Ctr

Assistant Professor

Center

Comprehensive Cancer Center

Assistant Professor

Center

Center for AIDS Research

Assistant Professor

Primary

Epidemiology

Assistant Professor

Biochemistry and Structural Biology

Cancer Biology

Cell, Molecular, & Developmental Biology

Genetics and Genomic Sciences

Genetics, Genomics and Bioinformatics

Immunology

Integrative Biomedical Sciences

Medical Scientist Training Program

Microbiology

Pathobiology and Molecular Medicine

Dr. Ojesina obtained his medical degree with Distinction in Biochemistry from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria in 1998. After a stint on the faculty at Ibadan, he obtained his PhD (Biological Sciences in Public Health) at Harvard University in 2007 with his dissertation focused on the molecular epidemiology of antiretroviral response, drug resistance and vertical transmission in HIV-1 infection (PhD mentor: Dr. Phyllis Kanki). Thereafter, he did postdoctoral work in cancer genomics and pathogen discovery under the mentorship of Dr. Matthew Meyerson at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. During this time, he and others in the lab developed computational and experimental methods for the identification of pathogens in next generation sequencing data. He also led the first comprehensive analyses of exome, transcriptome and whole genome sequencing data from cervical carcinomas, leading to the identification of novel E322K mutations in the MAPK1 gene (for the first time in primary human cancers), as well as significantly high expression of genes adjacent to HPV viral integration sites. Dr. Ojesina is one of the leaders of the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Cervical Cancer Analysis Working Group, and he is the Principal Investigator of an Avon Foundation-funded study focused on the analysis of next generation sequencing data to identify known and novel pathogens in breast cancer. Dr. Ojesina has received several honors and awards, including the Rebecca Ridley Kry Fellowship of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation (2008-2011), a Research Fellowship from the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (2012-2013), three AACR-GlaxoSmithKline Outstanding Clinical Scholar Awards (2011, 2013, 2014), a Career Development Award from the Johns Hopkins/UAB Cervical Cancer SPORE program (2015-2016), the Angus Cooper Award for Transplant Investigation (2015-2016), a V Foundation Scholar Award funded by the Stuart Scott Medical Research Fund (2015-2017) and V Scholar Plus Award (2018-2019).

Title
Interplay of Genomic Alterations and Microbial Influences in Cancer
Description
Broadly, the research in the Ojesina Lab lies at the nexus of translational genomics, integrative molecular epidemiology, oncology, infectious disease, and global health, with a primary focus on infection-related cancers (including HIV-associated malignancies) and women’s cancers. Our investigations integrate next generation sequencing with functional experiments in primary tissues and cell lines into order to address 3 questions: (i) what are the mechanisms that facilitate progression of premalignant tissues to invasive cancer? (ii) how do infections synergize with genomic and transcriptomic alterations in cancer pathogenesis, (iii) why do tumors recur after therapy? We anticipate that this work will have translational impact by facilitating the development of diagnostic biomarkers and predictive models for early detection, prevention and treatment of various cancers, in local and global contexts.

Publication	PUBMEDID
Cancer Genome Atlas Research Network. Integrated genomic and molecular characterization of cervical cancer. Nature. 2017 Jan 23. doi: 10.1038/nature21386 (co-corresponding author).	28112728
Arvey A, Ojesina AI, et al. The tumor virus landscape of AIDS-related lymphomas. Blood. 2015 May 14;125(20):e14-22. doi: 10.1182/blood-2014-11-599951.	25827832
Parfenov M, Pedamallu CS, Gehlenborg N, Freeman SS, Danilova L, Bristow CA, Lee S, Hadjipanayis AG, Ivanova EV, Wilkerson MD, Protopopov A, Yang L, Seth S, Song X, Tang J, Ren X, Zhang J, Pantazi A, Santoso N, Xu AW, Mahadeshwar H, Wheeler DA, Haddad RI, Jung J, Ojesina AI, Issaeva N, Yarbrough WG, Hayes DN, Grandis JR, El-Naggar AK, Meyerson M, Park PJ, Chin L, Seidman JG, Hammerman PS, Kucherlapati R; Cancer Genome Atlas Network. Characterization of HPV and host genome interactions in primary head and neck cancers. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Oct 28;111(43):15544-9. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1416074111.	25313082
Ojesina AI, Lichtenstein L, et al. Landscape of genomic alterations in cervical carcinomas. Nature. 2014 Feb 20;506(7488):371-5. doi: 10.1038/nature12881.	24390348
Kostic AD, Gevers D, Pedamallu CS, Michaud M, Duke F, Earl AM, Ojesina AI, Jung J, Bass AJ, Tabernero J, Baselga J, Liu C, Shivdasani RA, Ogino S, Birren BW, Huttenhower C, Garrett WS, Meyerson M. Genomic analysis identifies association of Fusobacterium with colorectal carcinoma. Genome Res. 2012 Feb;22(2):292-8. doi: 10.1101/gr.126573.111.	22009990
Kostic AD, Ojesina AI, Pedamallu CS, Jung J, Verhaak RG, Getz G, Meyerson M. PathSeq: software to identify or discover microbes by deep sequencing of human tissue. Nat Biotechnol. 2011 May;29(5):393-6. doi: 10.1038/nbt.1868.	21552235

cancer, infection, genomics, transcriptome, HIV, HPV, EBV, cervical, lymphoma, early detection, recurrence, precancerous, progression, mutations, microbiome, viral, RNASeq, diagnostics, therapy, global health, molecular epidemiology, women's health