Phillip Dumesic, MD, PhD

Principal Investigator

Phillip Dumesic received a BS in Biological Sciences from Stanford, where he worked with Paul Khavari on how MAP kinase signaling drives skin cancer. He completed an MD-PhD in the UCSF MSTP, where his graduate studies in Hiten Madhani’s laboratory addressed how specificity is achieved by the gene silencing pathways of RNA interference, repressive chromatin, and DNA methylation—the latter work supported by a stint in the laboratory of Geeta Narlikar. Phillip completed a postdoctoral fellowhip with Bruce Spiegelman at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. There, he studied how regulated mRNA translation contributes to the evolution and physiological control of mitochondrial biogenesis and oxidative metabolism. Phillip returned to UCSF in 2024 as an Assistant Professor in the Diabetes Center. His research has been supported by the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.