Ken Westover, M.D., Ph.D., is both a member of the lung cancer team and director of a research laboratory dedicated to cancer biology and the development of new therapeutic drugs. I look at cancer from its molecular basis to the physics of radiation treatment.” His arrival at UT Southwestern in 2012 was made possible by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, a state agency that has been tasked, among other goals, with recruiting top cancer researchers to Texas. Dr. Westover was recruited from the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program, where he distinguished himself in residency as a scientist as well as a radiation oncologist. Dr. Westover’s work has been published in numerous clinical and high-profile basic science journals, and he has also authored several book chapters relating to radiation therapy. His scientific work in graduate school shed light on the way genes are transcribed and was cited in the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to his mentor Roger Kornberg, Ph.D. “My primary objective is to improve cancer care through multidisciplinary innovation, particularly through efforts to understand and manipulate fundamental aspects of biology,” says Dr. Westover. “I believe this approach will be critical to achieve the delivery of personalized medicine to our patients.” Dr. Westover is particularly interested in using stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) – also known as stereotactic ablative radiation therapy (SABR) – to treat cancer patients, an approach that was pioneered by another member of UT Southwestern’s radiation oncology team, Robert Timmerman, M.D. This stronger, “ablative” dose of radiation precisely targets and destroys tumors in just a few treatments. In the lab, Dr. Westover is currently studying the underlying biology of ablative radiation with the goal of enhancing the potency of this treatment by adding targeted drugs. While at Harvard he was the first to publish clinical results showing that protons can be used to deliver effective SBRT for early-stage lung cancer in patients with poor pulmonary function.

Pharmacological targeting of the pseudokinase Her3. Xie T, Lim SM, Westover KD, Dodge ME, Ercan D, Ficarro SB, Udayakumar D, Gurbani D, Tae HS, Riddle SM, Sim T, Marto JA, Jänne PA, Crews CM, Gray NS Nat. Chem. Biol. 2014 Oct In situ selectivity profiling and crystal structure of SML-8-73-1, an active site inhibitor of oncogenic K-Ras G12C John C. Hunter, Deepak Gurbani, Scott B. Ficarro, Martin A. Carrasco, Sang Min Lim, Hwan Geun Choi, Ting Xie, Jarrod A. Marto, Zhe Chen, Nathanael S. Gray, and Kenneth D. Westover PNAS 2014 Early Edition Therapeutic Targeting of Oncogenic K-Ras by a Covalent Catalytic Site Inhibitor. Lim SM, Westover KD, Ficarro SB, Harrison RA, Choi HG, Pacold ME, Carrasco M, Hunter J, Kim ND, Xie T, Sim T, Jänne PA, Meyerson M, Marto JA, Engen JR, Gray NS Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 2013 Nov Neutrophil-lymphocyte and platelet-lymphocyte ratios as prognostic factors following stereotactic radiation therapy for early-stage non-small cell lung cancer. Cannon NA, Meyer J, Iyengar P, Ahn C, Westover KD, Choy H, Timmerman R J Thorac Oncol 2014 Oct Discovery of Type II Inhibitors of TGFß-Activated Kinase 1 (TAK1) and Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Kinase Kinase Kinase 2 (MAP4K2). Tan L, Nomanbhoy T, Gurbani D, Patricelli M, Hunter J, Geng J, Herhaus L, Zhang J, Pauls E, Ham Y, Choi HG, Xie T, Deng X, Buhrlage SJ, Sim T, Cohen P, Sapkota G, Westover KD, Gray NS J. Med. Chem. 2014 Jul In situ selectivity profiling and crystal structure of SML-8-73-1, an active site inhibitor of oncogenic K-Ras G12C. Hunter JC, Gurbani D, Ficarro SB, Carrasco MA, Lim SM, Choi HG, Xie T, Marto JA, Chen Z, Gray NS, Westover KD Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2014 Jun 111 24 8895-900 Radiation therapy as a backbone of treatment of locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer. Laine AM, Westover KD, Choy H Semin. Oncol. 2014 Feb 41 1 57-68 Characterization of Torin2, an ATP-competitive inhibitor of mTOR, ATM and ATR. Liu Q, Xu C, Kirubakaran S, Zhang X, Hur W, Liu Y, Kwiatkowski NP, Wang J, Westover KD, Gao P, Ercan D, Niepel M, Thoreen CC, Kang SA, Patricelli MP, Wang Y, Tupper T, Altabef A, Kawamura H, Held KD, Chou DM, Elledge SJ, Janne PA, Wong KK, Sabatini DM, Gray NS Cancer Res. 2013 Feb Quantitative analysis of HSP90-client interactions reveals principles of substrate recognition. Taipale M, Krykbaeva I, Koeva M, Kayatekin C, Westover KD, Karras GI, Lindquist S Cell 2012 Aug 150 5 987-1001 Proton SBRT for medically inoperable stage I NSCLC. Westover KD, Seco J, Adams JA, Lanuti M, Choi NC, Engelsman M, Willers H J Thorac Oncol 2012 Jun 7 6 1021-5 Treatment of non-small cell lung cancer patients with proton beam-based stereotactic body radiotherapy: dosimetric comparison with photon plans highlights importance of range uncertainty. Seco J, Panahandeh HR, Westover K, Adams J, Willers H Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. 2012 May 83 1 354-61 Radical prostatectomy vs radiation therapy and androgen-suppression therapy in high-risk prostate cancer. Westover K, Chen MH, Moul J, Robertson C, Polascik T, Dosoretz D, Katin M, Salenius S, D'Amico AV BJU international 2012 Apr Kinome-wide selectivity profiling of ATP-competitive mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitors and characterization of their binding kinetics. Liu Q, Kirubakaran S, Hur W, Niepel M, Westover K, Thoreen CC, Wang J, Ni J, Patricelli MP, Vogel K, Riddle S, Waller DL, Traynor R, Sanda T, Zhao Z, Kang SA, Zhao J, Look AT, Sorger PK, Sabatini DM, Gray NS J. Biol. Chem. 2012 Mar 287 13 9742-52 Should a sentinel node biopsy be performed in patients with high-risk breast cancer? Westover KD, Westover MB, Winer EP, Richardson AL, Iglehart JD, Punglia RS Int J Breast Cancer 2011 2011 973245 Significance testing as perverse probabilistic reasoning. Westover MB, Westover KD, Bianchi MT BMC Med 2011 9 20 Comprehensive and efficient HBB mutation analysis for detection of beta-hemoglobinopathies in a pan-ethnic population. Chan OT, Westover KD, Dietz L, Zehnder JL, Schrijver I Am. J. Clin. Pathol. 2010 May 133 5 700-7 Structural basis of transcription: backtracked RNA polymerase II at 3.4 angstrom resolution. Wang D, Bushnell DA, Huang X, Westover KD, Levitt M, Kornberg RD Science 2009 May 324 5931 1203-6 Mycotic aneurysm of the left main coronary artery producing acute coronary occlusion and purulent pericarditis. Westover K, Benedick B Int. J. Cardiol. 2007 Jan 114 3 e81-2 Structural basis of transcription: role of the trigger loop in substrate specificity and catalysis. Wang D, Bushnell DA, Westover KD, Kaplan CD, Kornberg RD Cell 2006 Dec 127 5 941-54 Structural basis of eukaryotic gene transcription.

Boeger H, Bushnell DA, Davis R, Griesenbeck J, Lorch Y, Strattan JS, Westover KD, Kornberg RD FEBS Lett. 2005 Feb 579 4 899-903