Steven Boeynaems, Ph.D., received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in bioengineering and Ph.D. degree in biomedical sciences from KU Leuven in Belgium. Dr. Boeynaems  pursued postdoctoral work as an EMBO Long Term Fellow at the Genetics Department of the Stanford University School of Medicine. Thanks to a CPRIT First-Time Tenure-Track grant, Dr. Boeynaems was recruited to Houston, Texas, in 2022. Here he was appointed as an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine and an investigator at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at the Texas Children's Hospital. He is also a member or the Therapeutic Innovation Center, the Center for Alzheimer's and Neurodegenerative Diseases, and the Dan L. Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

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Steven Boeynaems, Ph.D., received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in bioengineering and Ph.D. degree in biomedical sciences from KU Leuven in Belgium. Dr. Boeynaems  pursued postdoctoral work as an EMBO Long Term Fellow at the Genetics Department of the Stanford University School of Medicine. Thanks to a CPRIT First-Time Tenure-Track grant, Dr. Boeynaems was recruited to Houston, Texas, in 2022. Here he was appointed as an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine and an investigator at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at the Texas Children's Hospital. He is also a member or the Therapeutic Innovation Center, the Center for Alzheimer's and Neurodegenerative Diseases, and the Dan L. Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Dr. Boeynaem’s work focuses on the role of biomolecular condensates and cellular stress responses in the etiology of brain cancer.  The tumor microenvironment is an intensely stressful environment. How cancer cells adapt to and survive extreme proteotoxic stresses remains enigmatic. Defects in biomolecular condensates are associated with several age-related diseases, especially neurodegenerative disorders characterized by hallmark pathological protein aggregation. Emerging evidence now proposes that such condensates and protein aggregates are also deeply implicated in cancer biology and cell cycle regulation. Yet, it remains unclear how exactly these condensates confer stress signaling and resilience in the tumor microenvironment. The Boeynaems Lab addresses this open question by using a multidisciplinary approach to untangle how the biophysical stress response is regulated and engineers new tools to therapeutically target stress resilience in brain cancers.  Work in the Boeynaems Lab leverages novel mass spectrometry-based proteomics and machine learning approaches to biophysically and functionally dissect the tumor proteome. Using state-of-the-art synthetic biology tools, they perform genetic and chemical screening approaches to identify condensate modulators and small compounds that may inspire new therapeutic strategies for cancer.

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