B.Sc., Baylor University, 1984; M.A., Rice University, 1988; Ph.D., 1988. Caltech, 2003-.

Chemistry

The Heath group works on a broad variety of projects. One part of the group works in the area of solid-state quantum physics, materials science, and basic surface science, with a slight focus on energy conversion applications.

The other part of the group works on fundamental biology and translational medicine - with a clear focus on oncology. We are comprised of a diverse, talented, and highly motivated group of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Our graduate students come from the physical, organic, and inorganic areas of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, and from Physics, the Caltech/UCLA joint M.D./Ph.D. program, Bioengineering, Biology, and Electrical Engineering. Our postdoctoral researchers have similarly diverse backgrounds.

Furthermore, we collaborate extensively with groups at Caltech, groups within the UCLA medical school, and groups in Seattle, Europe, Israel, and Singapore. Our labs occupy about 60% of the basement level of the Noyes Laboratory of Chemical Physics, as well as a small laboratory at UCLA devoted to translational medicine.

One thing that draws our research projects together is that we focus on the fundamental scientific bottlenecks that, if solved, can provide keys toward solving much larger problems. Those problems can be in energy conversion technologies, translational medicine, or basic oncology studies.We believe in working hard, playing hard, and that our science should be fun.

Graduate students and postdocs who leave the group move into a variety of fields. The majority continue in academics; approximately 2 postdocs a year leave the group and take faculty positions within top ranked academic departments (chemistry, physics, engineering, etc.). About half of the graduate students take postdoctoral research positions, while the other half take industrial positions in everything from small start up companies to large corporations.

Modeling Dioxygen Reduction at Multicopper Oxidase Cathodes. . Peter Agbo, James R. Heath, Harry B. Gray , Journal of the American Chemical Society, 136 pg. 13882-7 (2014)

Human NK Cells Licensed by Killer Ig Receptor Genes Have an Altered Cytokine Program That Modifies CD4+ T Cell Function . Lin Lin, Chao Ma, Bo Wei, Najib Aziz, Raja Rajalingam, Susy Yusung, Henry A. Erlich, Elizabeth A. Trachtenberg, Stephan R. Targan, Dermot P. B. McGovern, James R. Heath and Jonathan Braun , Journal of Immunology, 193 pg. 940-9 (2014)

Microfluidics-Based Single-Cell Functional Proteomics for Fundamental and Applied Biomedical Applications . Yu J, Zhou J, Sutherland A, Wei W, Shin YS, Xue M, Heath JR , Annual Reviews of Analytical Chemistry, 7 pg. 275-95 (2014)

Glioblastoma cellular architectures are predicted through the characterization of two-cell interactions . Nataly Kravchenko-Balasha*, Jun Wang*, Francoise Remacle, R. D. Levine and James R. Heath , PNAS, 111 pg. 6521-26 (2014)

Adoptive transfer of MART-1 T cell receptor transgenic lymphocytes and dendritic cell vaccination in patients with metastatic melanoma . Thinle Chodon, Begona Comin-Anduix, Bartosz Chmielowski, Richard C. Koya, Zhongqi Wu, Martin S. Allen-Auerbach, Charles Ng, Earl Avramis, Elizabeth Seja, Arturo Villanueva, Tara A McCannel, Akira Ishiyama, Johannes Czernin, Caius G. Radu, Xiaoyan Wang, David W Gjertson, Alistair J. Cochran, Kenneth Cornetta, Deborah J.L. Wong, Paula Kaplan-lefko, Omid Hamid, Wolfram Samlowski, Peter A Cohen, Gregory A Daniels, Bijay Mukherji, Lili Yang, Jerome Zack, Donald B Kohn, James R. Heath, John A. Glaspy, Owen N. Witte, David Baltimore, James S. Economou, and Antoni Ribas, Clinical Cancer Research, 20 pg. 2457-2465 (2014)

Conversion of Danger Signals into Cytokine Signals by Hematopoietic Stem and Progenitor Cells for Regulation of Stress-Induced Hematopoiesis . Zhao JL, Ma C, O'Connell RM, Mehta A, Diloreto R, Heath JR, Baltimore D , Cell Stem Cell, 14(4) pg. 445-459 (2014)

Targeted Therapy Resistance Mediated by Dynamic Regulation of Extrachromosomal Mutant EGFR DNA . David A. Nathanson, Beatrice Gini, Jack Mottahedeh, Koppany Visnyei, Tomoyuki Koga, German Gomez, Ascia Eskin, Kiwook Hwang, Jun Wang, Kenta Masui, Andres Paucar, Huijin Yang, Minori Ohashi, Shaojun Zhu, Jill Wykosky, Rachel Reed, Stanley F. Nelson, Timothy F. Cloughesy, C. David James, P. Nagesh Rao, Harley I. Kornblum, James R. Heath, Webster K. Cavenee, Frank B. Furnari, Paul S. Mischel , Science, 343(6166) pg. 72-76 (2013)

A Chemical Epitope-Targeting Strategy for Protein Capture Agents: The Serine 474 Epitope of the Kinase Akt2 . Arundhati Nag, Samir Das, Mary Beth Yu, Kaycie M. Deyle, Steven W. Millward, James R. Heath , Angewandte Chemie Int. Ed., 52, 1-6 (2013)

A Chemically Synthesized Capture Agent Enables the Selective, Sensitive, and Robust Electrochemical Detection of Anthrax Protective Antigen . Blake Farrow, Sung A Hong, Errika C. Romero, Bert Lai, Matthew B. Coppock, Kaycie M. Deyle, Amethist S. Finch, Dimitra N. Stratis-Cullum, Heather D. Agnew, Sung Yang, James R. Heath , ACS Nano, 7(10), pp 9452-9460 (2013)

The mTOR Kinase Inhibitors, CC214-1 and CC214-2, Preferentially Block the Growth of EGFRvIII-Activated Glioblastomas . Beatrice Gini, Ciro Zanca, Deliang Guo, Tomoo Matsutani, Kenta Masui, Shiro Ikegami, Huijun Yang, David Nathanson, Genaro R. Villa, David Shackelford, Shaojun Zhu, Kazuhiro Tanaka, Ivan Babic, David Akhavan, Kelly Lin, Alvaro Assuncao, Yuchao Gu, Bruno Bonetti, Deborah S. Mortensen, Shuichan Xu, Heather K. Raymon, Webster K. Cavenee, Frank B. Furnari, C. David James, Guido Kroemer, James R. Heath, Kristen Hege, Rajesh Chopra, Timothy F. Cloughesy and Paul S. Mischel , Clinical Cancer Research, 19; 5722 (2013)

A Cocktail of Thermally Stable, Chemically Synthesized Capture Agents for the Efficient Detection of Anti-Gp41 Antibodies from Human Sera . Jessica A. Pfeilsticker, Aiko Umeda, Blake Farrow, Connie L. Hsueh, Kaycie M. Deyle, Jocelyn T. Kim, Bert T. Lai, James R. Heath , PLOS One, 10.1371/journal.pone.0076224 (2013)

Fast Metabolic Response to Drug Intervention Through Analysis on a Miniaturized, Highly Integrated Molecular Imaging System . Jun Wang, Kiwook Hwang, Daniel Braas, Alex Dooraghi, David Nathanson, Dean O. Campbell, Yuchao Gu, Troy Sandberg, Paul Mischel, Caius Radu, Arion F. Chatziioannou, Michael E. Phelps, Heather Christofk, and James R. Heath , J Nucl Med, 54:1820-1824 (2013)

Wetting: Contact with what? . Ke Xu & James R. Heath , Nature Materials, pg. 872-873 (2013)

Microchip platforms for multiplex single-cell functional proteomics with applications to immunology and cancer research . Wei Wei , Young Shik Shin , Chao Ma , Jun Wang , Meltem Elitas , Rong Fan and James R Heath , Genome Medicine, 5:75 (2013)

Hypoxia induces a phase transition within a kinase signaling network in cancer cells . Wei Wei, Qihui Shi, Francoise Remacle, Lidong Qin, David B. Shackelford, Young Shik Shin, Paul S. Mischel, R. D. Levinee and James R. Heath , PNAS, vol. 110 no. 15 (2013)

Multifunctional T-cell Analyses to Study Response and Progression in Adoptive Cell Transfer Immunotherapy . Chao Ma, Ann F. Cheung, Thinle Chodon, Richard C. Koya, Zhongqi Wu, Charles Ng, Earl Avramis, Alistair J. Cochran, Owen N. Witte, David Baltimore, Bartosz Chmielowski, James S. Economou, Begonya Comin-Anduix, Antoni Ribas, and James R. Heath , Cancer Discovery, 3; 418 (2013)

Catalysis of Dioxygen Reduction by Thermus thermophilus Strain HB27 Laccase on Ketjen Black Electrodes . Peter Agbo, James R. Heath, and Harry B. Gray , J Phys Chem B, 117 (2), pp 527-534 (2013)

In situ click chemistry: from small molecule discovery to synthetic antibodies . Steven W. Millward, Heather D. Agnew, Bert Lai, Su Seong Lee, Jaehong Lim, Arundhati Nag, Suresh Pitram, Rosemary Rohde and James R. Heath , Integr. Biol., 5, 87-95 (2013)

Silicon Nanowire Charge-Trap Memory Incorporating Self-Assembled Iron Oxide Quantum Dots . Ruo-Gu Huang, James R. Heath , Small, 8(22) pg. 3417-3421 (2012)

Quantitating Cell-Cell Interaction Functions with Applications to Glioblastoma Multiforme Cancer Cells . Jun Wang, Douglas Tham, Wei Wei, Young Shik Shin, Chao Ma, Habib Ahmad, Qihui Shi, Jenkan Yu, Raphael D. Levine, and James R. Heath , Nano Letters, Article ASAP (2012)