Dr. Simak Ali

Biography

Simak Ali leads a hormone-dependent cancer transcriptional research program in the Department of Surgery & Cancer. His main interests include defining the mechanisms of steroid hormone receptor action, with a special focus on the mechanisms of resistance to hormonal therapies and the development of new therapeutic approaches for the treatment of therapy-resistant breast and prostate cancer. Utilizing proteomic and transcriptomic methods, along with cell and molecular biology approaches, Dr. Ali is working to understand the mechanisms of resistance to hormone therapies in order to develop new therapeutic strategies. His highlights include a drug discovery effort directed at identifying inhibitors of estrogen receptor (ER)-directed transcriptional programs for the treatment of hormone therapy-resistant breast cancer. His work has yielded the first-in-class cancer drug targeting cyclin-dependent kinase 7 (CDK7), named Samuraciclib, which has progressed to clinical trials for estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer in combination with hormone therapies and for triple-negative breast cancer in combination with chemotherapy.

Research Interests