Gayle E Woloschak, PhD

Professor of Radiology and Radiation Oncology
Feinberg School of Medicine

Research Interests
Gayle Woloschak’s laboratory is pursuing several areas of genetic research Her projects include understanding the molecular basis of motor neuron disease in a mouse model and in humans--This project (funded by NIH) involves uncovering genes that cause motor neuron disease in a mouse model and also in humans. Her lab has several candidate genes that are being analyzed using a variety of different chip-based and protein-interaction approaches.

Another project involves understanding the molecular basis of normal tissue responses to ionizing radiation and radiation sensitivity syndromes--This project (also funded by NIH) involves identifying differences in molecular responses of normal tissues to the effects of ionizing radiation. The hope is to identify genes that can be used to distinguish people who are more or less likely to have particular late effects following radiation exposure. Her lab is also working on a related project with Dr. Jeri Logemann to identify people at risk for swallowing problems following head and neck cancer treatment.

Selected Publications
Brown, E. M., Paunesku, T., Wu, A., Thurn, K. T., Haley, B., Clark, J., Priester, T. and Woloschak, G. E. (2008). Methods for assessing DNA hybridization of peptide nucleic acid-titanium dioxide nanoconjugates. Anal Biochem 383, 226-35.

Paunesku, D., Paunesku, T., Wahl, A., Kataoka, Y., Murley, J., Grdina, D. J. and Woloschak, G. E. (2008). Incidence of tissue toxicities in gamma ray and fission neutron-exposed mice treated with Amifostine. Int J Radiat Biol 84, 623-34.

Wu, AiGuo, Paunesku, Tatjana, Brown, Eric M. B., Babbo, Angela, Cruz, Cecille, Aslam, Mohamed, Dravid, Vinayak, Woloschak, Gayle E. (2008) Titanium Dioxide Nanoparticles Assembled by DNA Molecules Hybridization and Loading of DNA Interacting Proteins. NANO 3(1), 27-36.

Endres, P. J., Paunesku, T., Vogt, S., Meade, T. J. and Woloschak, G. E. (2007). DNA-TiO2 nanoconjugates labeled with magnetic resonance contrast agents. J Am Chem Soc 129, 15760-1.

Paunesku, T., Vogt, S., Lai, B., Maser, J., Stojicevic, N., Thurn, K. T., Osipo, C., Liu, H., Legnini, D., Wang, Z. et al. (2007). Intracellular distribution of TiO2-DNA oligonucleotide nanoconjugates directed to nucleolus and mitochondria indicates sequence specificity. Nano Lett 7, 596-601.