Curtis R. Pickering, PhD

Dr. Curtis Pickering received his PhD from the University of California San Francisco where he studied the cell biology of early breast cancer. After completing his PhD, he traveled to Houston to became the first TRIUMPH Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. As a postdoctoral fellow he worked in the laboratory of Dr. Jeffrey Myers and performed some of the first integrated genomic analyses of head and neck cancer. He also contributed to multiple The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) projects. Dr. Pickering then established his own independent research laboratory at MD Anderson, where he continued to study the translational genomics of head and neck cancer. Recent studies have investigated predictive biomarkers for HPV-driven tumors, modulation of cell death pathways in oral cancer, epigenetic alterations that regulate radiosensitivity, and prognostic biomarkers for oral premalignancy. In 2022, Dr. Pickering joined the faculty of the Yale School of Medicine as an Associate Professor where he continues to try to improve the outcomes for head and neck cancer patients.