Priyanka Gopal, PhD
Research Assistant Professor, Radiation Oncology
Research Program
- Tumor Environment and Metastasis (TEAM)
- Translational Research in Malignancy (TRIM)
Cancer-Focused Research
The goal of Dr. Gopal's program is focused on understanding and overcoming therapeutic resistance in lung cancer by defining how tumour cells evolve, transition between cellular states, and adapt to treatment, while translating these insights into more precise and effective cancer therapies. Her work integrates patient-derived and genetically engineered tumour models, longitudinal treatment studies, molecular profiling, and computational approaches to uncover the evolutionary and molecular mechanisms that drive resistance to radiation, targeted therapies, and chemotherapy. A central theme of her research has been tumour plasticity, including the cellular state transitions that enable lung cancers to survive therapeutic pressure and ultimately contribute to treatment failure. Building on this foundation, she will be expanding her research at the intersection of cancer biology, artificial intelligence, and medical imaging, developing AI/ML approaches that integrate cellular morphology, cell-state dynamics, transcriptomic data, and medical imaging to predict therapeutic response and identify actionable determinants of resistance. The long-term goal is to establish an interdisciplinary, translational research program that moves from mechanistic discovery to predictive biomarkers and clinically deployable technologies, enabling treatment to be tailored to the evolving biology of each tumour and ultimately improving outcomes for patients with lung cancer.