Karthikeyan and Hildreth Join Division of Molecular & Cellular Pathology

The Division of Molecular & Cellular Pathology, directed by Ralph Sanderson, Ph.D., Professor, added two new faculty this year.

Eason Hildreth, Ph.D., joined the UAB Pathology faculty as Assistant Professor, coming to us from the Medical College of South Carolina. He began his career in veterinary medicine by obtaining his DVM from North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine. Hildreth then completed a small-animal rotating medicine and surgery internship with the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, before moving on to a small-animal surgical residency at the Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine. During his residency, he completed a concurrent master of science degree evaluating the use of parathyroid hormone-related protein (PTHrP) as an in vitro bone-forming agent.

After his surgical residency, Hildreth stayed at Ohio State to complete a Ph.D. that focused on evaluating the roles of PTHrP in skeletal development and the use of PTHrP as a bone-forming agent in vivo, supported by funding from an NIH-NIAMS F-32 grant and the Ohio State’s C. Glenn Barber Fund for Protein Research. During his Ph.D. studies, Hildreth developed an intense interest in the advanced imaging of bone using microCT, particularly in response to bone-forming therapies or genetic modification. This resulted in collaborations where he performed microCT analysis for multiple bone biology and cancer research laboratories. Upon completing his Ph.D. Hildreth became an associate faculty member in the Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine as an Instructor of Small Animal Surgical Practice. In this role, he taught bone biology, general surgery, and orthopedics within the veterinary curriculum. Starting in May 2015, he joined the laboratory of Michael Ostrowski, Ph.D., in the Comprehensive Cancer Center as a Post-Doctoral Fellow. He continued to teach within the veterinary curriculum. Hildreth’s research focus was the investigation of the role of macrophages and osteoclasts in breast cancer bone metastasis, and transcription factors and microRNAs regulating osteoblast and osteoclast differentiation and function.

In 2017, Hildreth joined Ostrowski at the Medical University of South Carolina, continuing his post-doctoral training in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the Hollings Cancer Center. He received an NIH K01 Mentored Research Scientist Career Development Award in 2018, and was promoted to Research Assistant Professor. In 2019 he received the John Haddad Young Investigator Award from the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.

In his position at UAB, Hildreth will continue to focus on macrophage and osteoclast-specific targeting for the prevention and treatment of breast cancer bone metastasis and primary bone malignancies. His research uses animal models of human disease and cancer, advanced in vivo imaging, nanoparticle drug delivery, ChIP Seq, and other molecular techniques.

Outside of work, he enjoys spending time with his wife Emily and their American Cocker Spaniel, Raleigh. They are looking forward to exploring all of the trails and parks in and around Birmingham. He is an avid soccer fan, and more specifically, Liverpool FC. Eason Hildreth, PhD

Mythreye Karthikeyan, Ph.D., completed her undergraduate education at the prestigious Biochemistry Honors program at Delhi University in India, followed by a master’s degree, a brief research internship, and subsequently a Ph.D. from the Department of Biology from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

This rigorous graduate training in the fundamentals of chromosome segregation mechanisms using cellular and genetic tools was the gateway to a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University, where she started her career in cancer signaling.

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Throughout her training and independent career, Karthikeyan has published in leading peer-reviewed periodicals/journals in the field of cancer biology (JCI, Cancer Research, Oncogene), and journals in cellular biochemistry and molecular biology (PNAS, JCB, JBC, Nat Communications, Molecular Cell, Molecular Biology of the Cell).

Following her postodoctoral fellowship, she was promoted to Research Assistant Professor at Duke University Medical School.

Her USC lab’s most recent efforts focused on ovarian cancer — the deadliest of gynecological malignancies facing women, with a 5-year survival rate (for advanced stage patients with marked metastatic spread) still remaining at less than 25%. Her lab discovered tumor specific signaling pathways in gynecological cancers that are amenable to targeted therapeutics. She hopes to advance the ability to target such pathways to the clinic. Karthikeyan’s lab will be in the Wallace Tumor Institute where she’ll continue working on ovarian cancer metastasis with several of her former USC lab members joining her here at UAB.

Dr. Karthikeyan’s research focuses on defining how tumor cells send signals to surrounding cells and how tumors respond to cues from their surroundings to promote tumor growth and metastasis. Her lab’s overall goal is to identify key signaling pathways that are tumor specific and also to target the same.

She first received funding for her postdoctoral work from the Department of Defense’s Ovarian Cancer Research Program, a fellowship that connected her directly to the challenge of ovarian cancer. In 2013 she was named a Liz Tilberis Scholar by the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance. She received additional support from the Rivkin Foundation, and since 2018 her work is supported by two active National Cancer Institute grants.

Mythreye Karthikeyan, PhD Award” in 2019.

In 2013 she joined the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Drug Discovery Biomedical Sciences department at the University of South Carolina as a tenure track assistant professor. In June 2018 Dr. Karthikeyan earned a secondary appointment as associate professor of Biomedical Engineering, in the USC College of Engineering. In June 2019, she received tenure and was promoted to Associate Professor. While at USC, she won the “Breakthrough Rising Star