Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Nutrition

Donald Patrick McDonnell, PhD

Professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology
Glaxo-Wellcome Distinguished Professor of Molecular Cancer Biology, in the School of Medicine
Professor in Medicine
Member of the Duke Cancer Institute
Campus mail C238a Lev Sci Res Ctr, Durham, NC 27708
Phone (919) 684-6035
Email address donald.mcdonnell@duke.edu

The research in our group is focused on the development and application of mechanism based approaches to identify novel therapeutics for use in the treatment and prevention of hormonally responsive cancers. Specifically we are interested in the pharmaceutical exploitation of the estrogen and androgen receptors as therapeutic targets in breast and prostate cancers and in defining how these receptors influence the pathogenesis of these diseases. These efforts have led to the discovery of several drugs that are currently being evaluated in the clinic as cancer therapeutics, and to the identification of potential biomarkers and predictors of response that can help to target the use of these new drugs. Most recently we have explored approaches to treat triple negative breast cancer and have identified an important pathway that links obesity/dyslipidemia and cancer risk.

Education and Training

  • Ph.D., Baylor College of Medicine, 1988

Grants

Publications

Lowder, Leah L., Matthew Powell, Sean E. Miller, Rigel J. Kishton, Charles B. Kelly, Connor B. Cribb, Kelly Mastro-Kishton, et al. “Mechanistic Investigation of Site-specific DNA Methylating Agents Targeting Breast Cancer Cells.” Journal of Medicinal Chemistry 64, no. 17 (September 2021): 12651–69. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jmedchem.1c00615.

PMID
34415160
Full Text

Liu, Wen, Binita Chakraborty, Rachid Safi, Dmitri Kazmin, Ching-Yi Chang, and Donald P. McDonnell. “Dysregulated cholesterol homeostasis results in resistance to ferroptosis increasing tumorigenicity and metastasis in cancer.” Nat Commun 12, no. 1 (August 24, 2021): 5103. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25354-4.

PMID
34429409
Full Text

Haines, Corinne N., Suzanne E. Wardell, and Donald P. McDonnell. “Current and emerging estrogen receptor-targeted therapies for the treatment of breast cancer.” Essays Biochem, July 30, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1042/EBC20200174.

PMID
34328178
Full Text

McDonnell, Donald P., Suzanne E. Wardell, Ching-Yi Chang, and John D. Norris. “Next-Generation Endocrine Therapies for Breast Cancer.” Journal of Clinical Oncology : Official Journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology 39, no. 12 (April 2021): 1383–88. https://doi.org/10.1200/jco.20.03565.

PMID
33705209
Full Text

Andreano, Kaitlyn J., Jennifer G. Baker, Sunghee Park, Rachid Safi, Sandeep Artham, Steffi Oesterreich, Rinath Jeselsohn, et al. “The Dysregulated Pharmacology of Clinically Relevant ESR1 Mutants is Normalized by Ligand-activated WT Receptor.” Mol Cancer Ther 19, no. 7 (July 2020): 1395–1405. https://doi.org/10.1158/1535-7163.MCT-19-1148.

PMID
32381587
Full Text

Mukherjee, Debarati, Robert Baldi, Ching-Yi Chang, Luigi Racioppi, and Donald P. McDonnell. “Impact of CaMKK2 inhibition in tumor-associated myeloid cells on CD8+cytotoxic T-cell recruitment into mammary tumors.” In Cancer Immunology Research, 8:56–57. AMER ASSOC CANCER RESEARCH, 2020.

Scholars@Duke

Wardell, Suzanne E., Alexander P. Yllanes, Christina A. Chao, Yeeun Bae, Kaitlyn J. Andreano, Taylor K. Desautels, Kendall A. Heetderks, Jeremy T. Blitzer, John D. Norris, and Donald P. McDonnell. “Correction to: Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic analysis of fulvestrant in preclinical models of breast cancer to assess the importance of its estrogen receptor-α degrader activity in antitumor efficacy.” Breast Cancer Res Treat 179, no. 3 (February 2020): 769. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-019-05498-0.

PMID
31734822
Full Text

Wardell, Suzanne E., Alexander P. Yllanes, Christina A. Chao, Yeeun Bae, Kaitlyn J. Andreano, Taylor K. Desautels, Kendall A. Heetderks, Jeremy T. Blitzer, John D. Norris, and Donald P. McDonnell. “Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic analysis of fulvestrant in preclinical models of breast cancer to assess the importance of its estrogen receptor-α degrader activity in antitumor efficacy.” Breast Cancer Res Treat 179, no. 1 (January 2020): 67–77. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-019-05454-y.

PMID
31562570
Full Text

Ochsner, Scott A., David Abraham, Kirt Martin, Wei Ding, Apollo McOwiti, Wasula Kankanamge, Zichen Wang, et al. “The Signaling Pathways Project, an integrated 'omics knowledgebase for mammalian cellular signaling pathways.” Sci Data 6, no. 1 (October 31, 2019): 252. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-019-0193-4.

PMID
31672983
Full Text

Cocce, Kimberly J., Jeff S. Jasper, Taylor K. Desautels, Logan Everett, Suzanne Wardell, Thomas Westerling, Robert Baldi, et al. “The Lineage Determining Factor GRHL2 Collaborates with FOXA1 to Establish a Targetable Pathway in Endocrine Therapy-Resistant Breast Cancer.” Cell Rep 29, no. 4 (October 22, 2019): 889-903.e10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2019.09.032.

PMID
31644911
Full Text

Pages