Charles J. Cho MD, PhD

Charles Cho is gastroenterologist with a research interest in gastric and pancreatic metaplasias and cancer. He received an MD at the Hanyang University College of Medicine in Seoul, Korea. This was followed by internship and residency training in internal medicine and a fellowship in gastroenterology at the Asan Medical Center in Seoul, Korea. Dr. Cho pivoted from his clinical gastroenterology background to pursue a research focus, and received a PhD in translational medicine at the University of Ulsan College of Medicine in Seoul, Korea. He continued on to a postdoctoral fellowship in the United States, working in the lab of Jason Mills at the Washington University in St.Louis. He moved to Baylor College of Medicine with Dr. Mills, and is currently an instructor there.

In the Mills lab, Dr. Cho has investigated zymogenic cell behavior at homeostasis and after injury in the stomach, and how this occurs through paligenosis – an evolutionarily conserved mechanism used to recruit differentiated cells back into the cell cycle in response to injury that has been characterized in the Mills lab. This has led Dr. Cho to investigate how ribosomes and translation are regulated during the paligenosis process, using genetically engineered mouse models as well as in vitro, in vivo, and ex vivo approaches focused on determining how the defective management of ribosomes ultimately results in heightened cancer risk. Dr. Cho has published his work in this field in several important journals, including Developmental Cell. He is the recipient of an early-career award from the Department of Defense Peer-Reviewed Cancer Research Program in support of this work.