Mehdi Damaghi

Mehdi Damaghi headshot

Mehdi Damaghi

Associate Professor, Department of Pathology
Stony Brook Cancer Center

Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794
mehdi.damaghi@stonybrookmedicine.edu

Biography

Dr. Mehdi Damaghi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology and a member of the Stony Brook Cancer Center at Stony Brook University. His laboratory applies ecological and evolutionary principles to understand how breast and ovarian cancers start, progress, and metastasize as tumor cells adapt to a changing microenvironment. A central focus is how harsh conditions such as acidity select for new metabolic phenotypes, and how tumor cells in turn reshape their surroundings, driving heterogeneity and plasticity. His group integrates single-cell genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and pathomics to study these processes in their natural context. Current projects address the ecology and evolution of early breast cancer, metabolic biomarkers of DCIS progression and upstaging, tumor–stroma co-evolution, and resistance to PARP inhibitors in ovarian cancer.

Dr. Damaghi received a BSc in cell and molecular biology from Chamran University in Ahvaz, Iran, an MSc in biochemistry from Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran, and a PhD in cell biology and genetics from the Max Planck Institute in Dresden, Germany. He completed postdoctoral training in cancer imaging and metabolism at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, where he went on to serve as a research scientist and instructor in the Department of Cancer Physiology, and also held an assistant professorship in Oncological Sciences at the University of South Florida. He joined Stony Brook in 2021. He leads an NCI U01 award on the ecology and evolution of breast cancer and is co-investigator on an NCI R01 using radiomics and pathomics to predict DCIS progression.

Selected Publications

  1. Downey ER, Forero Pinto AM, Booth AL, Brown J, Rejniak KA, Damaghi M. Symbiotic cancer cell-stroma crosstalk in the acidic tumor microenvironment. J Evol Biol. 2026 Aug 22:voag072. doi: 10.1093/jeb/voag072. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 42631637.
  2. Persi E, Sudalagunta PR, Wolf YI, Canevarolo RR, Damaghi M, Shain KH, Silva AS, Koonin EV. Genome-level selection in tumors as a universal marker of resistance to therapy. Nat Commun. 2025 Jul 16;16(1):6535. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-61709-x. PMID: 40664650; PMCID: PMC12263839.
  3. Xiao Y, Elmasry M, Bai JDK, Chen A, Chen Y, Jackson B, Johnson JO, Prasanna P, Chen C, Damaghi M. Eco-Evolutionary Guided Pathomic Analysis Detects Biomarkers to Predict Ductal Carcinoma In Situ Upstaging. Cancer Res. 2025 Jun 2;85(13):2537-2547. doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-24-2070. PMID: 40299786; PMCID: PMC13289847.
  4. Han GYQ, Alexander M, Gattozzi J, Day M, Kirsch E, Tafreshi N, Chalar R, Rahni S, Gossner G, Burke W, Damaghi M. Ecological and evolutionary dynamics to design and improve ovarian cancer treatment. Clin Transl Med. 2024 Sep;14(9):e70012. doi: 10.1002/ctm2.70012. PMID: 39210542; PMCID: PMC11362027.
  5. Song JH, Dávalos LM, MacCarthy T, Damaghi M. Evolvability of cancer-associated genes under APOBEC3A/B selection. iScience. 2024 Mar 6;27(4):109433. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109433. PMID: 38550998; PMCID: PMC10972820.
  6. Ordway B, Gillies RJ, Damaghi M. Extracellular Acidification Induces Lysosomal Dysregulation. Cells. 2021 May 13;10(5):1188. doi: 10.3390/cells10051188. PMID: 34067971; PMCID: PMC8152284.
  7. Strobl MAR, West J, Viossat Y, Damaghi M, Robertson-Tessi M, Brown JS, Gatenby RA, Maini PK, Anderson ARA. Turnover Modulates the Need for a Cost of Resistance in Adaptive Therapy. Cancer Res. 2021 Feb 15;81(4):1135-1147. doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-20-0806. Epub 2020 Nov 10. PMID: 33172930; PMCID: PMC8455086.
  8. Damaghi M, West J, Robertson-Tessi M, Xu L, Ferrall-Fairbanks MC, Stewart PA, Persi E, Fridley BL, Altrock PM, Gatenby RA, Sims PA, Anderson ARA, Gillies RJ. The harsh microenvironment in early breast cancer selects for a Warburg phenotype. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Jan 19;118(3):e2011342118. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2011342118. PMID: 33452133; PMCID: PMC7826394.
  9. Damaghi M, Mori H, Byrne S, Xu L, Chen T, Johnson J, Gallant ND, Marusyk A, Borowsky AD, Gillies RJ. Collagen production and niche engineering: A novel strategy for cancer cells to survive acidosis in DCIS and evolve. Evol Appl. 2020 Nov 4;13(10):2689-2703. doi: 10.1111/eva.13075. PMID: 33294017; PMCID: PMC7691473.
  10. Sadeghi M, Ordway B, Rafiei I, Borad P, Fang B, Koomen JL, Zhang C, Yoder S, Johnson J, Damaghi M. Integrative Analysis of Breast Cancer Cells Reveals an Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition Role in Adaptation to Acidic Microenvironment. Front Oncol. 2020 Mar 10;10:304. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2020.00304. PMID: 32211331; PMCID: PMC7076123.
  11. Persi E, Duran-Frigola M, Damaghi M, Roush WR, Aloy P, Cleveland JL, Gillies RJ, Ruppin E. Systems analysis of intracellular pH vulnerabilities for cancer therapy. Nat Commun. 2018 Jul 31;9(1):2997. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-05261-x. PMID: 30065243; PMCID: PMC6068141.
  12. Damaghi M, Gillies R. Phenotypic changes of acid-adapted cancer cells push them toward aggressiveness in their evolution in the tumor microenvironment. Cell Cycle. 2017 Oct 2;16(19):1739-1743. doi: 10.1080/15384101.2016.1231284. Epub 2016 Sep 16. PMID: 27635863; PMCID: PMC5628657.
  13. Pilon-Thomas S, Kodumudi KN, El-Kenawi AE, Russell S, Weber AM, Luddy K, Damaghi M, Wojtkowiak JW, Mulé JJ, Ibrahim-Hashim A, Gillies RJ. Neutralization of Tumor Acidity Improves Antitumor Responses to Immunotherapy. Cancer Res. 2016 Mar 15;76(6):1381-90. doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-15-1743. Epub 2015 Dec 30. Erratum in: Cancer Res. 2017 May 1;77(9):2552. doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-17-0559. PMID: 26719539; PMCID: PMC4829106.
  14. Damaghi M, Tafreshi NK, Lloyd MC, Sprung R, Estrella V, Wojtkowiak JW, Morse DL, Koomen JM, Bui MM, Gatenby RA, Gillies RJ. Chronic acidosis in the tumour microenvironment selects for overexpression of LAMP2 in the plasma membrane. Nat Commun. 2015 Dec 10;6:8752. doi: 10.1038/ncomms9752. PMID: 26658462; PMCID: PMC4682176.
  15. Damaghi M, Wojtkowiak JW, Gillies RJ. pH sensing and regulation in cancer. Front Physiol. 2013 Dec 17;4:370. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2013.00370. PMID: 24381558; PMCID: PMC3865727.