Prominent gastric cancer researcher Yana Zavros was announced as the University of Georgia’s inaugural Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) Eminent Scholar in Molecular Medicine. She will be UGA’s 18th current GRA Eminent Scholar.
The Georgia Research Alliance is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to drive economic impact in the state from university research and entrepreneurship. GRA Eminent Scholars are leading experts in their fields at Georgia’s top universities. Collectively, the scholars attract hundreds of millions of dollars in public and private grants each year.
“We are very grateful to the Georgia Research Alliance for their support,” said UGA President Jere W. Morehead. “Dr. Zavros will be an extraordinary addition to the faculty of the University of Georgia. She will be a driving force for the establishment of a high-caliber, translationally focused research enterprise in our School of Medicine and an outstanding collaborator with other members of the GRA Academy.”
Building a research center from scratch
A highly accomplished scientist and leader, as well as a dedicated mentor, Zavros will recruit a cohort of additional faculty researchers and create a research center that will serve as the foundation for a robust research enterprise in the new UGA School of Medicine. She also will serve as director of the center and as a professor of interdisciplinary biomedical sciences.
“At UGA, I have been given this amazing opportunity to build a research center focused on translating research and scientific discovery from the lab to the clinic, that will bridge medicine with science to benefit patients,” Zavros said. “I am honored and humbled to have been chosen for this mission. My vision is that this will be the center that other institutions will look to as an example of how to successfully connect biomedical research and medicine in a way that will rapidly translate scientific discovery to the patient.”
Zavros believes one of UGA’s greatest strengths is the existing culture of collaboration, which is manifest in partnerships across the university’s schools, colleges and research institutions, as well as through UGA’s collaborations with other institutions.
“Dr. Zavros is an excellent addition to the robust team of talented researchers here at the University of Georgia, and she will build a solid foundation and precedent for groundbreaking research at the School of Medicine,” said UGA School of Medicine Founding Dean Shelley Nuss. “Her multidisciplinary research has already impacted the lives of patients with cancer and Cushing’s disease and has the promise to advance the University of Georgia’s reputation as a top research institution in the country.”
Zavros’ work on organoids has applications in personalized cancer treatments
Prior to her move to UGA, Zavros most recently served as a professor of cellular and molecular medicine and associate head of research at the University of Arizona’s College of Medicine – Tucson. She was also director of the Tissue Acquisition and Cellular/Molecular Analysis Shared Resource at the university.
“Yana Zavros is a renowned leader of exploration into the world of gastrointestinal biology,” said Tim Denning, GRA president and CEO. “Her work has not only brought a new understanding of the mechanisms behind illness and disease — she has also moved modern medicine down the path of developing treatments that help people. Dr. Zavros is the right person to serve as the inaugural GRA Eminent Scholar in UGA’s School of Medicine.”
Zavros earned her Ph.D. in 1998 in the department of surgery at the University of Melbourne. She then completed a Howard Hughes Medical Institute postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan. In 2007, Zavros joined the department of pharmacology and systems physiology at the University of Cincinnati as an assistant professor. There she pioneered organoid-based technologies with the goal of generating patient-derived models to study underlying mechanisms driving initiation and progression of gastrointestinal cancers.
An organoid is a mini version of an organ that is created in a lab to mimic the functions of the organ for studying disease development and progression, developing new diagnostic tools and testing new drug candidates. Zavros’ lab has used organoid models to investigate the interactions between tumor cells and the cells of a patient’s immune system to learn how tumor cells suppress the body’s natural immune response.
Cushing’s disease: An understudied condition until now
More recently, Zavros has extended her research to Cushing’s disease, a rare disorder that causes the body to produce too much cortisol. Zavros has a personal connection to the condition, having been diagnosed after 16 years of searching for answers to her symptoms.
“It was a turning point in how I viewed research and the responsibility we have as scientists to ensure knowledge is translated to the patient,” Zavros said. “I started to ask why does it take this long to get diagnosed and treated? I realized that despite several decades of research, therapeutic approaches that overcome therapy resistance and prevent disease recurrence for patients with Cushing’s disease were incremental. This was disappointing to me.”
Currently, there are only a handful of treatment options for Cushing’s, and the medications used to treat it weren’t specifically designed to treat the disease. Zavros describes the medical treatment for Cushing’s disease as a “trial and error” approach.
As both a patient and a researcher, Zavros couldn’t accept that.
“As a scientist, I felt like I had found my purpose,” she said. “For me, it’s important that every question that we’re asking has clinical relevance. We must have an interdisciplinary team of translational scientists, oncologists, pathologists, surgeons, clinicians and veterinarians. That’s what it takes to accelerate the movement of scientific discovery to the clinic.”
Multi-institutional, interdisciplinary NIH grant to focus on Cushing’s research
Zavros said research and medical silos prevent both the diagnosis and treatment of patients with Cushing’s disease and other diseases.
Her interdisciplinary, multi-institutional team was recently awarded a $14 million grant from the National Institutes of Health National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. The National Biorepository and Resource for Pituitary Neuroendocrine Tumor Translational Research (BioPitNeT) will be a collection of research tools and resources that will be integrated into the broader scientific community of investigators studying Cushing’s disease and related neuroendocrine diseases.
Aligning with the unifying and sustainable approach of UGA’s Precision One Health Initiative, Zavros’ work will benefit not only human patients but canine patients as well, as Cushing’s is common in dogs, particularly certain breeds. The research team, which includes scientists in UGA’s College of Veterinary Medicine, will provide insights into mechanisms and treatments for the disease, serving as a bona fide example of the One Health approach to medicine, which calls for researchers to collaborate on projects that take into account and optimize human, animal and environmental health.
“Dr. Zavros’ commitment to interdisciplinary research and her keen ability to move discoveries from the lab to the clinic make her an excellent choice to lead our School of Medicine’s research enterprise,” said S. Jack Hu, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. “She will play a critical role as our university works to advance medical discoveries for the benefit of people in Georgia and beyond.”
