Valerian Bhatt

Valerian Bhatt focuses on GPX4 as a cancer drug target and the development of ferroptosis-inducing strategies for cancer therapy. His research has characterized GPX4 expression and dependency patterns across cancer types, revealing subsets of cancer cells with extreme GPX4 dependency making them highly vulnerable to ferroptosis induction. He has investigated mechanisms of ferroptosis resistance in cancer including FSP1-CoQ10 and GCH1-BH4 pathways that operate as GPX4-independent ferroptosis defense mechanisms. His laboratory is developing small molecule ferroptosis inducers with improved selectivity and pharmacological properties.