Pamela Hershberger

PhD

Specializing In:

Lung cancer therapeutics Vitamin D-based combination therapies

Research Interests:

Chemoprevention of aerodigestive malignancies Elucidating the effects of e-cigarettes and tobacco smoke exposure on the airway epithelium Novel approaches to exploiting vitamin D metabolites in lung cancer treatment

About Pamela Hershberger

Positions

Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center

  • Associate Professor of Oncology
  • Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics
  • Member, Experimental Therapeutics Graduate Program
  • Member, Developmental Therapeutics Cancer Center Support Grant Program
  • Director, Integrated Cancer Sciences
  • Member, Standing Grant Review Panel Alliance Foundation
  • Member, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center Retreat Planning Committee
  • Member, Experimental Therapeutics Training Track

Background

Education and Training:

  • Post-doctoral - Institute for Molecular Virology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI
  • Post-doctoral - Department of Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
  • PhD - Department of Biochemistry, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH

Fellowship:

  • University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
  • University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA

Professional Memberships:

  • American Association for Cancer Research

Honors & Awards:

  • 2019 - Graduate Student Association Award for Faculty Excellence in Mentoring and Teaching
  • 2018 - Dean's Award for Excellence in Graduate Education

Research

Research Overview:

Work within my laboratory focuses on the prevention and treatment of lung cancer. Specifically, we seek to establish and understand the role of vitamin D metabolites in delaying lung tumor development and progression. Ongoing projects are designed to: (1) establish the role of dietary vitamin D3 in preventing lung cancer; (2) exploit vitamin D-mediated suppression of the epithelial-mesenchymal transition to prevent failure of molecularly targeted agents in lung cancer; and (3) identify novel strategies for overcoming vitamin D resistance in molecularly defined subsets of lung cancer.

Work in my laboratory is supported by NIH/NCI and the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation.

Women in Science: Pamela Hershberger, PhD Lung Cancer in Non-Smokers

Featured on Cancer Talk

Women in Science: Pamela Hershberger, PhD
Lung Cancer in Non-Smokers

Publications

Full Publications list on PubMed

Key Publications

  • Upadhyay SK, Verone A, Shoemaker S, Qin M, Liu S, Campbell M, Hershberger PA. 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25(OH)2D3) signaling capacity and the epithelial-mesenchymal transition in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC): Implications for use of 1,25(OH)2D3 in NSCLC treatment. Cancers (Basel). 2013 Nov 8;5(4):1504-21.
  • Verone-Boyle AR, Shoemaker S, Attwood K, Morrison CD, Hershberger PA. Diet-Derived 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 activates VDR target gene expression and suppresses EGFR mutant non-small cell lung cancer growth in vitro and in vivo. Oncotarget. 2016. 7(1):995-1013.
  • Liu C, Shaurova T, Shoemaker S, Petkovich M, *Hershberger PA, *Wu Y. *Co-corresponding authors. Tumor-Targeted Nanoparticles Deliver a Vitamin D-Based Drug Payload for Treatment of EGFR Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor-Resistant Lung Cancer. Molecular Pharmaceutics. 2018. 15:3216-3226.
  • Shaurova T, Dy GK, Battaglia S, Hutson A, Zhang L, Zhang Y, Lovly CM, Seshadri M, Goodrich DW, Johnson CS, Hershberger PA. Vitamin D3 metabolites demonstrate prognostic value in EGFR-mutant lung adenocarcinoma and can be deployed to oppose acquired therapeutic resistance. Cancers 2020. 12:675.
  • Shaurova T, Zhang L, Goodrich DW, Hershberger PA. Understanding Histologic Transformation as a Path to Targeted Therapy Failure in EGFR-mutant Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Frontiers in Genetics-Genomic Medicine, 2020.