PhD
UNC TREND MPI
Tope Keku, PhD, is a professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. She will serve as one of the Co-PIs on the UNC TREND and co-lead Project 2 and the Administrative Core.
Keku is a molecular epidemiologist with over 25 years of experience in cancer and translational research. Her expertise is in the gut microbiome, GI diseases and host-microbiome interactions and cancer. She has been a PI, Co-PI or Co-I on NIH-funded R01 and GI SPORE grants on studies that span basic sciences, translational, and population sciences as well as cancer health disparities. She is the PI on the Case Western University GI SPORE subcontract at UNC.
Keku is the director of the Partners Program, a cancer education-training program as part of the NCI UNC–North Carolina Central University U54 Partnership grant on cancer health disparities that provides summer research experience in cancer biology to undergraduate students. She was a member of the NIH Cancer Biomarker study section, and served on multiple NIH-NCI Special Emphasis Review Panels (2006-2019).