Biography

James Bibb is the inaugural chair of the Department of Translational Neurosciences at the Univ. of Arizona College of Medicine in Phoenix. He was previously the vice chair of research in the UAB Dept. of Surgery. Dr. Bibb's lab discovered that mechanisms of synaptic plasticity and neuronal injury overlap with mechanisms that drive cancers.

His group showed that cell type-specific induction of neuronal injury mechanisms in neuroendocrine cell populations causes clinically accurate mouse models of neuroendocrine cancers. The lab is applying advanced multiomic analyses to these models in parallel with human tumor tissue to identify novel tumorigenic and discovering pathways that drive cancer cell proliferation. They are developing biomarker-guided precision medicine treatments and discovering new drugs to target neoplastic signaling mechanisms as therapies for neuroendocrine tumors and other types of cancers. The lab is also using advanced and innovative neurobiology approaches to understand the causes and develop treatments for the neurological and neuropsychiatric effects of chemotherapy.

Cancer Focus

Study of the causes and development of new treatments and precision medicine approaches for cancers driven by Cdk5 including neuroendocrine cancers. In addition we are studying the causes and developing new treatments to protect and reverse the effects of cancer chemotherapy on CNS function.