UC Davis Health Department of Dermatology Research
Basic and Clinical Research Activities
In recent years, the UC Davis Health Department of Dermatology has significantly expanded its research efforts, making important contributions to science and medicine. With the addition of new faculty, we are continuing to strengthen our programs. Currently, our department ranks No. 11 nationwide in National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant funding among U.S. dermatology departments (i.e., Blue Ridge rankings).
Our Clinical Research Unit includes eight faculty investigators, supported by three clinical research fellows and five research coordinators. Together, they are leading 44 active Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved studies covering a wide range of skin conditions, including atopic dermatitis, psoriasis, acne, chronic wounds, aphthous ulcers, skin cancer and more.
Highlighted Research Faculty
Samuel T. Hwang, M.D., Ph.D., Professor and Chair of Dermatology at the UC Davis School of Medicine, has a strong interest in immunological diseases of the skin, including psoriasis and cutaneous T cell lymphoma. As a senior scientist at the NIH, Hwang brings more than 20 years of expertise in leukocyte and cancer cell trafficking. His research focuses on the role of chemokine receptors — including CCR6 and CXCR4 — in psoriasis and cancer, supported by long-standing NIH funding.
William J. Murphy, Ph.D., serves as Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Dermatology and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology. For more than 30 years, his research has focused on cancer immunotherapy and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), supported by consistent NIH funding. His laboratory investigates how obesity and aging affect immunotherapy outcomes, using preclinical models — including mouse, feline, canine and non-human primates — in collaboration with the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and the California National Primate Research Center, as well as clinical samples and patient outcomes. This work encompasses melanoma responses and the cutaneous manifestations of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) following HSCT. More recently, his team has also explored how the microbiome shapes immune responses under varying conditions.
Roslyn Rivkah Isseroff, M.D., is a Distinguished Professor with a long-term interest in the study of skin wound repair. Her group has made important contributions to the mechanism of skin-cell migration, including the effect of the electric field. Her group has recently uncovered the important role of beta-adrenergic receptor in this process.
Emanual Maverakis, M.D., is an NIH-funded basic scientist and translational researcher who focuses on developing novel genetic and analytical approaches to characterize large “omic” datasets in the fields of glycoimmunology, immunogenetics and cancer immunology. His recent publications have appeared in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (Dillen et. al. 2018, Patrick et. al., 2021), JCI Insight (Merleev et. al. 2018), the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U.S.A (Marchitto et al. 2019, Park et. al., 2020), Nature Medicine (Wang et. al. 2019), Chemical Science (Park et. al. 2018), and Science Translational Medicine (Khuat et. al. 2020). As a clinician and clinical trialist, he specializes in treating patients living with rare forms of autoimmunity (Maverakis et. al. Nature Reviews Disease Primers 2020, New England Journal of Medicine 2021) and patients living with cutaneous metastatic melanoma and various immune-mediated malignancies (J Am Acad Dermatol. 2015, Clinical Cancer Research 2019 and 2021).
Yoshikazu Takada, M.D., Ph.D., was instrumental in discovering beta1 integrins as members of the integrin superfamily and contributed to the cloning of a number of other integrins. His group has recently demonstrated the important role of integrins as co-receptors for a large number of growth factors and other biological regulators. Their studies have led to the development of novel inhibitors of cell growth and angiogenesis that have the potential to be used for the treatment of inflammation, autoimmunity and cancer.
Min Zhao, M.D., Ph.D., has been leading a group that demonstrated physiological electric signals as a predominant cue guiding cell migration in epithelial wound healing. His group identified some critical signaling and genetic bases for cells to respond to electric signals. His current research focuses on the directional migration of epithelial cells to restore the barrier function.
