Christopher Lucchesi, Ph.D.

Dr. Lucchesi’s research group takes a multifaceted approach to address questions pertaining to bladder cancer development, progression, and drug resistance. His lab’s current research focus includes: (i) determining the effects of environmental exposures, such as pesticide and smoke exposure, on bladder cancer progression; (ii) development of innovative 3D tumor models, such as patient derived organoid-on-a-chip models, to advance our understand of bladder cancer development and to screen novel therapeutics; (iii) the identification of, and functional elucidation of, key cancer relevant protein-protein interactions that drive oncogenesis which can be therapeutically targeted.

Dr. Lucchesi’s expertise lies in translational cancer biology, immuno-oncology, and bioengineering. His research integrates 3D bioprinting, patient-derived tumoroid modeling, and computational analytics to study tumor–immune interactions and therapeutic response. Areas of focus include:

• 3D Bioprinted Tumoroid Platforms: Development and validation of patient-derived 3D tumor models that incorporate autologous stromal and immune components to evaluate drug and immunotherapy sensitivity.
• Immuno-Oncology and Precision Medicine: Characterizing immune checkpoint signaling, tumor immune evasion, and treatment response concordance using multiomic and functional ex vivo assays.
• Environmental and Molecular Oncology: Investigating the molecular mechanisms by which pesticide and toxicant exposure drive tumor progression, EMT, and treatment resistance.
• Mitochondrial and Stress Response Pathways: Defining the role of metabolic and oxidative stress signaling in cancer progression and therapeutic resistance.
• Data Integration and AI-Driven Analysis: Applying image-based biomarkers and machine-learning models to correlate digital pathology features with functional ex vivo drug response data.

PubMed listing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/christopher.lucchesi.1/bibliography/public/