Nathan Ihle
Principle Scientist
Oncology Research
Pfizer
Austria
Biography
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. Ihle joined Pfizer in 2013 and began working to identify specific dependencies in cancer cells necessary for growth and survival.
Research Interest
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.
