Dr. Ihle joined Pfizer in 2013 and began working to identify specific dependencies in cancer cells necessary for growth and survival. His current work focuses on efforts to inhibit Ras signaling, a pathway disregulated at a high frequency in tumors while sparing any detrimental effects of Ras inhibition in normal tissue.  Dr. Ihle received his BS in Environmental Biology at the University of Arizona in 2001. Prior to joining Pfizer, he began working in the laboratory of Garth Powis characterizing PI3K inhibitors derived from the natural product Wortmannin. In 2005, the lab moved to MD Anderson in Houston, Texas where Dr. Ihle became a program coordinator for an optimized PI3K inhibitor, leading studies outlining how to mitigate the on-target hyperglycemia seen with PI3K inhibition and describing the interplay between activating KRas and PI3K mutations in determining the response of cancer cells. In 2008, this inhibitor moved to clinical trials and he began working towards his PhD, becoming a full time student in 2010. For his graduate work, Dr. Ihle provided basic research support to a multi-armed targeted therapy clinical trial studying KRas signaling in lung cancer. His work has contributed to 16 publications with nine being first author studies or reviews.

 cancer cells,inhibit Ras signaling