PRG - Staff

The staff at the PRG are dedicated to pancreatic research and are experts in their fields. Each brings their own expertise and work ethic to the group and the PRG would be what it is today without their invaluable and selfless contributions.

Stephen J. Pandol, M.D., is the overall Director of the Pancreatic Research Group (PRG) at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center/UCLA and a Professor of Medicine at UCLA. Dr. Pandol did his GI clinical fellowship at UCLA with Jon Isenberg and received his research training at NIH with Jerry Gardner and Robert Jensen. He joined the faculty at UCSD in 1982 and moved to UCLA and the Greater Los Angeles Veterans Health Care System in 1996. Dr. Pandol studies the cellular mechanisms of pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer and is particularly interested in mechanisms of inflammation and cell death in these disorders. Dr. Pandol's research is supported by grants from the Department of Veterans Affairs and NIH.

Anna S. Gukovskaya, Ph.D., is the Scientific Director of the PRG at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center/UCLA and Adjunct Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She obtained her B.Sci. in chemical physics and then Ph.D. in biochemistry and cell biology. Dr. Gukovskaya did research in biophysics of nucleic acids and cell biology (Ca2+ signaling in lymphocytes) at the Academy of Sciences in Russia (former Soviet Union). After emigrating to the U.S. in 1992, she joined Dr. Pandol's laboratory at UCSD. Dr. Gukovskya has successfully become an established cell biologist in pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer. Her research centers on signaling mechanisms underlying cell death in acute and chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer. The objective is to identify key pathways mediating necrosis in pancreatitis and the resistance to death signals in pancreatic cancer in order to develop novel therapeutic strategies. Dr. Gukovskaya's research is supported by grants from the Department of Veterans Affairs and NIH.

Ilya Gukovsky, Ph.D., is a senior scientist at the PRG and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He obtained his B.S. in chemical physics and then Ph.D. in biophysics, and did research in biophysics of nucleic acids at the Academy of Sciences in Russia (former Soviet Union). After emigrating to the U.S. in 1992, Dr. Gukovsky trained in molecular biology at the laboratory of Dr. Michael "Geoff" Rosenfeld at UCSD. He joined the PRG in 1996. Dr. Gukovsky's research focuses on molecular mechanisms of the inflammatory response in pancreatitis, in particular, the role of the key transcription factor NF-?B. Recently, his research concentrated on the mechanism of alcoholic chronic pancreatitis. Dr. Gukovsky has served as Co-Principal Investigator on a number of Dr. Pandol's grants.

Mouad Edderkaoui, Ph.D., received his PhD in Cell Biology from the University of Greifswald in Germany in 2004 and has a Master's Degree in cellular and molecular biology from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium from 1998. He is now working as a post-doctoral fellow at the PRG laboratory. He is currently studying the role of the transactivation of growth factor receptors by extracellular matrix proteins in the protection of pancreatic cancer cells from death and has previously studied the role of reactive oxygen species induced by growth factors and extracellular matrix proteins on the protection of pancreatic cancer cells from apoptosis.