Dr. Deel is a clinician scientist in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology. In addition to caring for pediatric patients with hematologic disorders or malignancy, his research focuses on finding novel ways to target fusion-positive pediatric sarcomas. His current work focuses on understanding the gene regulation and molecular pathways responsible for alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, which is among the most difficult to cure pediatric cancers. Alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma is driven by chromosomal translocations t(2;13) or t(1;13) that result in oncogenic transcription factors encoding for PAX3/7-FOXO1 fusion proteins. The PAX3/7-FOXO1 oncogenes are currently not viable therapeutic targets. Using a variety of cell culture and murine models, Dr. Deel is investigating genes and pathways that regulate or coordinate PAX3/7-FOXO1-mediated tumorigenesis.
