Hassan Ashktorab is a Professor in the Departments of Medicine. He serves, or has served as the member of gastrointestinal working group in the Howard University Cancer Center, executive member of The Howard University Cancer Center, the Adjunct Professor at The Department of Genetics and Human Genetics and the director of Microarray facility at Howard University and the chair of college of medicine Research committee. He has been awarded several NIH grants including RO3, RO1 and DOD grants. He has awarded the outstanding Researcher in 2011 in Howard University college of Medicine. He is a member of PLoS One and Digestive Disease and Science editorial board and past editorial board of GUT. He has been member of different NIH study sections since 2002. He was awarded visiting professorship from Jiangsu University, China in 2015.

His research focus is on epigenetics, genetics and epidemiology of gastrointestinal cancers especially colon cancer including the molecular mechanisms governing cellular proliferation, influence during oncogenic transformation and tumorigenesis. Our long term goals include the identification and characterization of genetic (distinctive mutations) and epigenetic factors (such as DNA methylation and histone modifications) that play a central and direct role in the initiation and/or progression of human cancers, specifically gastric and colon cancer. This includes research on chromatin modification through methylation or acetylation of genes/histones that may play critical role in the regulation of transcription of many genes, leading to alteration of cell function and cell cycle. In addition, detection of DNA methylation biomarkers for both early detection and prognosis is part of our interests using Next Generation Sequencing. We have recently detected several epigenetic (hypermethylated) and genetic biomarkers (novel mutations) that are significantly in tumors from African Americans compared to Whites (highlighted in Cancer and PNAS 2015). My translational/clinical research focuses on the African-American population, investigating genomic instability and gene alteration in patients with adenoma and colorectal cancer. This is a critical step for the understanding of the onset of cancer progression in African Americans with the goal of tackling this disease disparity in this population.