Jia Xu, Ph.D., Principal Investigator

Assistant Professor, Department of Genetics

Assistant Professor, Department of Pathology

Associate member, O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center

Associate member, Center for Clinical and Translational Science

Email: xuj@uab.edu

Jia received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas-M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Health Sciences Center at Houston. During his Ph.D., he studied molecular mechanisms underlying a long-standing puzzle: how TGF-β switches from a tumor suppressor in pre-malignant cells to a metastasis promoter in cancer cells, with Dr. Dihua Yu. He then pursued his postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Ramon Parsons at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, during which he worked on targeting the PI3K/AKT pathway in cancer and investigating the novel function of PTEN-Long. He now leads a research group investigating how oncogenic signaling pathways regulate mitotic programs and cancer development. We are also interested in the epigenetic mechanism of breast cancer lineage plasticity and heterogeneity.

Selected Honors and Awards

2025-2026 The Mike Slive Foundation Award

2025-2026 O’Neal Invest Catalyst Award, UAB

2025-2026 The Elsa U. Pardee Foundation Award

2022-2024 Breast Cancer Research Foundation of Alabama Award

2022 IMPACT Award, School of Medicine Dean’s office, UAB

2019-2021          Leo and Julia Forchheimer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship

2016-2019    The Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Institutional Research Training Grant (T32 Postdoc training grant), NIH

2010-2011 Scientific Excellence Recognition Awards, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

2009-2013       DOD Breast Cancer Predoctoral Fellowship Award

Professional Associations/Affiliations

American Association for Cancer Research, 2006-present

American Society for Investigative Pathology, 2024-present

Scholarly Activities

Editorial Board, American Journal of Pathology, 2026-present

Editorial Board, Gene and Diseases, 2025-present

Editorial Board, Clinical Breast Cancer, 2024-present

Editorial Board, Biological Procedures Online, 2024-present