Epigenetics & Disease Prevention
Roderick H. Dashwood, PhD, FRSB
University Distinguished Professor
Director, Center for Epigenetics and Disease Prevention (CEDP)
John S. Dunn Chair in Disease Prevention
Center for Epigenetics and Disease Prevention
2121 W. Holcombe Blvd.
Houston, TX 77030
Houston, TX 77030
Mission
This Board of Regents’ designated center seeks to identify protective agents from natural sources, immunoprevention, and drug repurposing, acting via epigenetic mechanisms to inhibit disease development, including patients.
Research
- Epigenetics has been described as “the software that runs the human genome”, and is viewed traditionally as involving heritable changes in gene expression not tied to DNA sequence alterations.
- Unlike the genome, the epigenome is quite “plastic” and can be (re)programmed by environmental, dietary, and other exogenous factors to influence human health and disease progression.
- Scientists in the CEDP apply bioinformatics, biostatistics, in silico, biochemical, molecular, preclinical, and human translational approaches to examine the continuum from early life stages through normal development, and into various pathologies (e.g., cancer, pediatric disorders, COPD, and cardiovascular diseases).
- Due to its proximity to the Texas Medical Center in Houston, the CEDP serves as a conduit for advancing cutting-edge research in the clinic, focused on DNA methylation and demethylation, histone modifications, chromatin remodeling, and noncoding RNAs.
CORES
- Under the leadership of Dr. Praveen Rajendran, the Antibody & Biopharmaceutics Core can generate customized polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies tailored to meet the specific needs of individual research programs.
- Under the leadership of Dr. Kurt Zhang, the Rigor & Reproducibility Core assists investigators with incorporating Rigor and Reproducibility into their research by performing rigorous statistical and bioinformatics analysis.
- A Next Generation Sequencing Core has been established under the leadership of Dr. Yun (Nancy) Huang, using state-of-the-art high-throughput sequencing coupled with in-house bioinformatics expertise under the auspices of Dr. Jia Li.
For additional resources and for shared use regarding our CORES, please contact Wan-Mohaiza Dashwood.