Karen
Kaul, MD, PhD
Professor
Northwestern University - Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Research Institute
To Contact Dr. Kaul:
phone: 847-570-2052
e-mail: k-kaul@northwestern.edu
Dr. Kaul's website
PubMed
Reference Lookup
Research Interests
The laboratory of Dr. Karen Kaul is involved in translational research, using
basic molecular techniques to diagnose and monitor human disease. They have
developed a number of in house assays for the detection of various malignancies
and infectious agents, validated these for clinical use, and utilitzed them
to improve patient care and achieve a better understanding of the disease.
Her lab’s research
focus has been study of the mechanisms and consequences of metastasis for
breast and prostate cancer. They have developed sensitive and specific RT-PCR
assays for the detection of breast and prostate epithelial cells, and used
these methods to search for occult tumor cells outside the organ of origin
in cancer patients, such as blood, lymph nodes, and bone marrow. They have
demonstrated, for example, that tumor cells are present in the bloodstream
of a subset of patients with prostate cancer, and that tumor cells can be
showered into the circulation during surgery. Dr. Kaul’s lab is currently
monitoring these patients and developing animal models in which to study the
clinical relevance of these cells, as well as mechanisms to inactivate them.
Additionally, they are utilizing genetic methods to identify new markers for
tumor cells. Dr. Kaul’s lab is particularly interested in those that
correlate with a more aggressive phenotype and thus the ability of tumor cells
to result in a metastatic lesion.