The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation has named Rafal Donczew, Ph.D., as an assistant member in the Cell Cycle and Cancer Biology Research Program. He joins OMRF from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, where he completed a postdoctoral fellowship.
Donczew’s lab will study a family of proteins that regulate gene transcription, the process of “reading” DNA, using simple yeast as a model. The breakdown of this regulation is a common cause of cancer.
“Dr. Donczew is working on recently discovered factors that could play an important role,” said Gary Gorbsky, Ph.D., who heads the Cell Cycle and Cancer Biology Research Program and holds the W.H. and Betty Phelps Chair in Developmental Biology at OMRF. “Gene regulation is a major focus of our department, and this addition will amplify the tremendous collaborative research among members of our program and with other labs at OMRF.”
Donczew received a master’s degree in biotechnology from the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology and a doctorate in molecular biology from the Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy, both in Wroclaw, Poland.
