Hani Goodarzi, PhD

Associate Professor
Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics
Department of Urology
Primary Thematic Area
Secondary Thematic Area
Research Summary
Our lab focuses on developing computational and experimental strategies to reveal and mechanistically characterize novel regulatory pathways that drive cancer metastasis.
Mentorship Development

4/11/19    Acknowleding and Negotiating the Mentee-Mentor Tensions Inherent in the Research Lab (Mission Bay)
10/20/20    Gathering in Community: a Training for Faculty and Staff

+1 415 230-5189

Cancer, fundamentally, is a disease of disordered gene expression. Cancer cells rely on deregulated expression of oncogenic and tumor suppressive pathways to initiate and maintain the transformation process. Thus, delineating how cancer cells achieve such pathologic gene expression states is a crucial step towards understanding and ultimately treating cancer as a disease. Towards achieving this goal, my laboratory employs a systems biological and multidisciplinary approach that integrates computational and experimental strategies to identify and characterize key regulatory programs that underlie cancer progression. The systems-level frameworks implemented in our lab ensure a truly unbiased and systematic approach to studying this key biological challenge. Such bottom-up and agnostic approaches are crucial for discovering pathways that fall outside of our prior knowledge of regulatory interactions and would otherwise remain hidden in a top-down reductionist framework.

Featured publications:

 Goodarzi H, Nguyen HCB, Zhang S, Dill BD, Molina H, Tavazoie SF (2016). Modulated expression of specific tRNAs drives gene expression and cancer progression. Cell, 165(6), 1416-27. PMCID: PMC4915377. Co-corresponding authors

 Goodarzi H, Liu X, Nguyen HCB, Zhang S, Fish L, Tavazoie SF (2015). Endogenous tRNA-derived fragments suppress breast cancer progression. Cell 161, 1-13. PMCID: PMC4457382.

 Goodarzi H, Zhang S, Buss CG, Fish L, Tavazoie S, Tavazoie SF (2014). Metastasis-suppressor transcript destabilization through TARBP2 binding of mRNA hairpins. Nature, 513(7517):256-60. PMCID: PMC4440807.

Oikonomou P*, Goodarzi H*, Tavazoie S (2014). Systematic Identification of Regulatory Elements in Conserved 3’ UTRs of Human Transcripts. Cell Reports 7(1): p281–292. PMCID: PMC4430845. *Equal contribution

Goodarzi H, Najafabadi HS, Oikonomou P, Greco TM, Fish L, Salavati R, Cristea IM, Tavazoie S (2012). Systematic discovery of structural elements governing stability of mammalian messenger RNAs. Nature, 485, 264-268. PMCID: PMC3350620

Publications

Transformers and genome language models.

Nature machine intelligence

Micaela E. Consens, Cameron Dufault, Michael Wainberg, Duncan Forster, Mehran Karimzadeh, Hani Goodarzi, Fabian J. Theis, Alan Moses, Bo Wang

Focal adhesion kinase-YAP signaling axis drives drug-tolerant persister cells and residual disease in lung cancer.

Nature communications

Haderk F, Chou YT, Cech L, Fernández-Méndez C, Yu J, Olivas V, Meraz IM, Barbosa Rabago D, Kerr DL, Gomez C, Allegakoen DV, Guan J, Shah KN, Herrington KA, Gbenedio OM, Nanjo S, Majidi M, Tamaki W, Pourmoghadam YK, Rotow JK, McCoach CE, Riess JW, Gutkind JS, Tang TT, Post L, Huang B, Santisteban P, Goodarzi H, Bandyopadhyay S, Kuo CJ, Roose JP, Wu W, Blakely CM, Roth JA, Bivona TG

Abstract LB170: Artificial intelligence-assisted morphology-based detection and enrichment of malignant effusion tumor cells as a method for molecular profiling.

Cancer research

Mark J. Magbanua, Laura Huppert, Janifer Cruz, Jackson Goudreau, Shaopu Zhou, Keyi Yin, Pavel Stejskal, Ryan Carelli, Julie Kim, Linda Hsie, Maggie Wang, Zhouyang Lian, Michael Phelan, Manisha Ray, Chassidy Johnson, Amy L. Delson, Ron Balassanian, Jennifer Rosenbluth, Laura van't Veer, Michelle Melisko, Hope S. Rugo, Mahyar Salek, Maddison Masaeli, Hani Goodarzi

Neuronal Nsun2 Deficiency is Associated With Codon-Specific Epitranscriptomic Dysregulation of Gly-Trnas and Corresponding Proteomic Shift Impacting Synaptic Signaling and Behavior.

Biological psychiatry

Jennifer Blaze, Hannah Phillips, Soeren Heissel, Albertas Navickas, Amara Plaza-Jennings, Marcus Foo, Christopher Katanski, Christopher Watkins, Zachary Pennington, Behnam Javidfar, Sergio Espeso-Gil, Henrik Molina, Denise Cai, Tao Pan, Wei-Dong Yao, Hani Goodarzi, Fatemeh Haghighi, Schahram Akbarian

The DNA methylation landscape of advanced prostate cancer.

Nature genetics

Zhao SG, Chen WS, Li H, Foye A, Zhang M, Sjöström M, Aggarwal R, Playdle D, Liao A, Alumkal JJ, Das R, Chou J, Hua JT, Barnard TJ, Bailey AM, Chow ED, Perry MD, Dang HX, Yang R, Moussavi-Baygi R, Zhang L, Alshalalfa M, Laura Chang S, Houlahan KE, Shiah YJ, Beer TM, Thomas G, Chi KN, Gleave M, Zoubeidi A, Reiter RE, Rettig MB, Witte O, Yvonne Kim M, Fong L, Spratt DE, Morgan TM, Bose R, Huang FW, Li H, Chesner L, Shenoy T, Goodarzi H, Asangani IA, Sandhu S, Lang JM, Mahajan NP, Lara PN, Evans CP, Febbo P, Batzoglou S, Knudsen KE, He HH, Huang J, Zwart W, Costello JF, Luo J, Tomlins SA, Wyatt AW, Dehm SM, Ashworth A, Gilbert LA, Boutros PC, Farh K, Chinnaiyan AM, Maher CA, Small EJ, Quigley DA, Feng FY

Genomic Hallmarks and Structural Variation in Metastatic Prostate Cancer.

Cell

Quigley DA, Dang HX, Zhao SG, Lloyd P, Aggarwal R, Alumkal JJ, Foye A, Kothari V, Perry MD, Bailey AM, Playdle D, Barnard TJ, Zhang L, Zhang J, Youngren JF, Cieslik MP, Parolia A, Beer TM, Thomas G, Chi KN, Gleave M, Lack NA, Zoubeidi A, Reiter RE, Rettig MB, Witte O, Ryan CJ, Fong L, Kim W, Friedlander T, Chou J, Li H, Das R, Li H, Moussavi-Baygi R, Goodarzi H, Gilbert LA, Lara PN, Evans CP, Goldstein TC, Stuart JM, Tomlins SA, Spratt DE, Cheetham RK, Cheng DT, Farh K, Gehring JS, Hakenberg J, Liao A, Febbo PG, Shon J, Sickler B, Batzoglou S, Knudsen KE, He HH, Huang J, Wyatt AW, Dehm SM, Ashworth A, Chinnaiyan AM, Maher CA, Small EJ, Feng FY

Genomic Hallmarks and Structural Variation in Metastatic Prostate Cancer.

Cell

Quigley DA, Dang HX, Zhao SG, Lloyd P, Aggarwal R, Alumkal JJ, Foye A, Kothari V, Perry MD, Bailey AM, Playdle D, Barnard TJ, Zhang L, Zhang J, Youngren JF, Cieslik MP, Parolia A, Beer TM, Thomas G, Chi KN, Gleave M, Lack NA, Zoubeidi A, Reiter RE, Rettig MB, Witte O, Ryan CJ, Fong L, Kim W, Friedlander T, Chou J, Li H, Das R, Li H, Moussavi-Baygi R, Goodarzi H, Gilbert LA, Lara PN, Evans CP, Goldstein TC, Stuart JM, Tomlins SA, Spratt DE, Cheetham RK, Cheng DT, Farh K, Gehring JS, Hakenberg J, Liao A, Febbo PG, Shon J, Sickler B, Batzoglou S, Knudsen KE, He HH, Huang J, Wyatt AW, Dehm SM, Ashworth A, Chinnaiyan AM, Maher CA, Small EJ, Feng FY