Favour Akinjiyan

Program: Molecular Genetics and Genomics

Current advisor: Gregory D. Longmore, MD

Undergraduate university: New York Institute of Technology, 2016

Enrollment year: 2018

Research summary
Improving response to immunotherapy in High Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer

I am in the lab of Dr. Katherine Fuh. My PhD aims are:

Aim 1: Identify molecular targets that mediate chemotherapeutic response to neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapy in patients with advanced high grade serous ovarian cancer.

Aim 2: Elucidate the role of the DDR2 tyrosine kinase in immunotherapeutic response and decipher molecular pathways involved in synergistic interaction between DDR2 and checkpoint inhibitors like anti-PD1 and anti-CTLA4

Aim 3: Determine how paclitaxel and AXL inhibition promotes tumor-associated macrophage polarization and affects other immune subpopulations such as T cell, NK cells, and dendritic cells

Graduate publications
Akinjiyan FA, Dave RM, Alpert E, Longmore GD, Fuh KC. 2022 DDR2 Expression in Cancer-Associated Fibroblasts Promotes Ovarian Cancer Tumor Invasion and Metastasis through Periostin-ITGB1. Cancers (Basel), 14(14):3482. PMCID: PMC9319689

Akinjiyan FA, Adams A, Xu S, Wang M, Toriola AT. 2022 Plasma Growth Factor Gene Expression and Mammographic Breast Density in Postmenopausal Women. Cancer Prev Res (Phila), 15(6):391-98. PMCID: PMC9167743

Akinjiyan FA, Han Y, Luo J, Toriola AT.. 2021 Does circulating progesterone mediate the associations of single nucleotide polymorphisms in progesterone receptor (PGR)-related genes with mammographic breast density in premenopausal women?. Discov Oncol, 12(1):47. PMCID: