Howard Crawford

My laboratory studies cellular plasticity in pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer using cutting edge technologies, including single cell sequencing, spatial transcriptomics and spatial proteomics, applied to patient samples and genetically engineered mouse models. Cellular plasticity is part of a wound healing process that is co-opted in tumor progression and is involved in tumor cell crosstalk with the tumor microenvironment. Understanding and interrupting this process in tumor progression has the potential to reveal new and effective treatments for pancreatic cancer, the third biggest cancer killer in the US.