Office
(631) 632-1852
Email
eric.brouzes@stonybrook.edu
Stony Brook University
Bioengineering Building, Room 217
Stony Brook, NY 11794-5281
Eric Brouzes, PhD
Associate Professor and
Director of the Graduate Program, Biomedical Engineering,
Stony Brook University
Research Program
Imaging, Biomarker Discovery and Engineering SciencesDepartment
Department of Biomedical EngineeringAffiliated faculty, Laufer Center
Faculty member, Institute for Engineering-Driven Medicine
Research Interest
Analyzing heterogeneity of cancer tissues - It is increasingly appreciated that cells within a population, even derived from a common ancestor, exhibit a high degree of heterogeneity. Cell subpopulations generally arise from genetic mutations, epigenetic modifications or stochastic gene expression. This heterogeneity underlines the importance of single-cell approaches that permits the analysis of correlations that are otherwise obscured with techniques that collect the average cellular response. The analysis of population heterogeneity is particularly relevant to certain pathologies like cancer. Cancer development is generally described as an evolutionary process where a cell population randomly acquires mutations and natural selection acts on the resultant phenotypic diversity. This view has been recently challenged by the description of stochastic gene expression that can induce transitions between distinct phenotypes without genetic mutations. Hence, non-genetic phenotypic variations may play a more prominent role in disease than previously anticipated. Finally, cell phenotypes could be stabilized by cellular interactions and the loss of these interactions could trigger stochastic gene expression and tumorigenesis. These different models that try to reconcile the different data accumulated from a few decades of molecular biology studies stress the importance of combining high-throughput single-cell techniques with system biology approaches for studying cancer.
Education
Postdoctoral: Genetics, Genetics Department, Harvard Medical School (Adviser: Norbert Perrimon), 2004-2006Ph.D.: Interface Physics-Biology, Universite Denis Diderot- Paris7, Institut CURIE, 1998-2004
M.Sc.: Interface Physics-Biology, Universite Denis Diderot- Paris7, Paris, 1998
Engineer: Physics,Ecole Superieure de Physique et Chimie de la Ville de Paris (ESPCI-ParisTECH), Paris, 1994-1998