Thomas Adrian, PhD, MRC Path

Professor and Director of the PhD Program
Department of Basic Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, MBRU, Dubai, UAE.

Professor Adrian is an experienced Cancer Biologist who trained at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School (Imperial College School of Medicine) in London, where he received his Ph.D. and M.R.C.Path. He moved to Yale University as director of the GI Surgical Research Laboratory, then to Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska as Professor and head of the Physiology Division and Research Director in the Cancer Center, and then to Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago, where he was the Edward Elcock Professor of Surgery and Pathology and Director of Gastrointestinal Cancer Research. In 2006, he moved to the UAE as a professor and chairman of the Department of Physiology at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at the United Arab Emirates University. In 2018, he moved to the new College of Medicine at MBRU in Dubai, where he also directs the PhD program in Biomedical Sciences.

Professor Adrian has published more than 400 scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals (Citations >30,000) and over 90 reviews and book chapters. His papers have been published in multiple journals, including Nature, Science, Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, Cancer Research, Clinical Cancer Research, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Oncology, Neoplasia, British Journal of Cancer, European Journal of Cancer, International Journal of Cancer, and many other journals.

His group is conducting a large-scale multi-omics study to try to find out why so many young women are developing breast cancer in the Arabian Gulf Region. In addition, other research projects underway include the investigation of a novel tumor suppressor gene, the effectiveness and mechanisms of action of novel therapeutics from marine sources, and the mechanisms of resistance to conventional therapeutics.