Ite A. Offringa, PhD

Dr. Offringa is Associate Professor of Surgery and of Biochemistry & Molecular Medicine at USC Keck School of Medicine. She received her Ph.D. in 1991 from University of Leiden (the Netherlands), and she undertook a postdoctoral research fellowship from 1991–1996 at Harvard Medical School (Boston, MA). She joined the USC faculty in 1996. Research in the Offringa laboratory is/has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, American Lung Association, the Wright Foundation, the Whittier Translational Research Fund, the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation, Joan’s Legacy, the Department of Defense, the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Fund, the Thomas G Labrecque Foundation, the V Foundation, the Canary Foundation, the Kazan Foundation, the Hoag Family Foundation, the California Community Foundation, STOP Cancer, and private donations from many generous individuals, including the Mettler family, Wally and Conya Pembroke, Michelle and Paul Zygielbaum, Steven Schwartz, Sharon Binder, Bonnie and Tony Addario, Larry Auerbach, Judy Glick, and others.

The Offringa lab studies the cancer that kills the most Americans every year (over 125,000 people per year, almost one Boeing 747 of people per day!). More people die of lung cancer than from breast, prostate, and colon cancer combined. The high death rate is largely the result of detecting this cancer too late.

On the one hand, the Offringa lab focuses on lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD), the most common histological type of lung cancer. It arises in the alveoli or air sacs, which make up 90% of the lung surface and, for one adult, constitute a surface the size of half a tennis court. The alveolar epithelium is thus inordinately exposed to airborne environmental carcinogens and viruses. We study global gene expression in primary LUAD samples and cell lines, the epigenetic basis of normal alveolar lung development, the effects of the environment on the lung epigenome, the interplay between the genome and the epigenome, and single cell transcriptomics.
We are also studying the role of single nucleotide polymorphisms in lung cancer predisposition; one aspect of early detection is risk classification. Understanding how genetic differences between individuals influences cancer risk will help identify the subjects at highest risk, for whom it is even more important that they should be screened.

Another area of focus of the Offringa lab is small cell lung cancer (SCLC), the most aggressive type of lung cancer. SCLC rapidly metastasizes and patients have an average 5-year survival of just 8%. We are analyzing patients’ anti-cancer immune responses to see how these could be leveraged for targeted immunotherapy.

Lastly, we are interested in protein engineering and biomolecular interactions, which are key to the development of new drugs and therapies. The Offringa lab oversees the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center’s SwitchSENSE DRX2 Biosensor, which is used to analyze biomolecular interactions.

• Mentoring Minority Cancer Researchers of Tomorrow: Comparison of the Face-to-Face, Virtual, and Hybrid Training Methods of the CaRE2 Summer Cancer Research Education and Training Program J Cancer Educ. 2024 Mar 23. . View in PubMed
• Florida-California Cancer Research, Education and Engagement (CaRE2) Health Equity Center: Structure, Innovations, and Initial Outcomes Cancer Control. 2023 Jan-Dec; 30:10732748231197878. . View in PubMed
• Lack of racial and ethnic diversity in lung cancer cell lines contributes to lung cancer health disparities Front Oncol. 2023; 13:1187585. . View in PubMed
• Bio-Design and Manufacturing Design and realization of lung organoid cultures for COVID-19 applications. 2023. . View in PubMed
• Development of human alveolar epithelial cell models to study distal lung biology and disease iScience. 2022 Feb 18; 25(2):103780. . View in PubMed
• Comprehensive epigenomic profiling of human alveolar epithelial differentiation identifies key epigenetic states and transcription factor co-regulatory networks for maintenance of distal lung identity BMC Genomics. 2021 Dec 18; 22(1):906. . View in PubMed
• Developing a Novel Framework for an Undergraduate Cancer Research Education and Engagement Program for Underrepresented Minority Students: the Florida-California CaRE2 Research Education Core (REC) Training Program J Cancer Educ. 2021 10; 36(5):914-919. . View in PubMed
• Endoplasmic reticulum chaperone GRP78/BiP is critical for mutant Kras-driven lung tumorigenesis Oncogene. 2021 05; 40(20):3624-3632. . View in PubMed
• The Sulfotransferase SULT1C2 Is Epigenetically Activated and Transcriptionally Induced by Tobacco Exposure and Is Associated with Patient Outcome in Lung Adenocarcinoma Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 12 31; 19(1). . View in PubMed
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• Integrated Single-Cell RNA-Sequencing Analysis of Aquaporin 5-Expressing Mouse Lung Epithelial Cells Identifies GPRC5A as a Novel Validated Type I Cell Surface Marker Cells. 2020 11 11; 9(11). . View in PubMed
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• Positional integration of lung adenocarcinoma susceptibility loci with primary human alveolar epithelial cell epigenomes Epigenomics. 2018 09; 10(9):1167-1187. . View in PubMed
• CLDN181 attenuates malignancy and related signaling pathways of lung adenocarcinoma in vivo and in vitro. Int J Cancer. 2018 12 15; 143(12):3169-3180. . View in PubMed
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• Association between GWAS-identified lung adenocarcinoma susceptibility loci and EGFR mutations in never-smoking Asian women, and comparison with findings from Western populations Hum Mol Genet. 2017 01 15; 26(2):454-465. . View in PubMed
• Somatic Genomics and Clinical Features of Lung Adenocarcinoma: A Retrospective Study PLoS Med. 2016 Dec; 13(12):e1002162. . View in PubMed
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• Lenz, Heinz-Josef
• Lee, Amy
• Haiman, Christopher
• Liang, Gangning