Meet the P.I.

Peter E. Zage, MD, PhD

Peter E. Zage, MD, PhD is an associate professor-in-residence in pediatric oncology at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center and attending hematologist/oncologist at Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego. Dr. Zage received his bachelor's degree in biology from The Johns Hopkins University and earned his medical and doctoral degrees from Columbia University in New York. He then completed a residency in pediatrics at the University of Chicago Children's Hospital and a fellowship in pediatric hematology/oncology at Children's Memorial Hospital (now Lurie Children's Hospital) before starting his first faculty position as an assistant professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. In 2011 he moved to a faculty position in the Section of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Cancer Center, where he was a member of the Solid Tumor, Neuroblastoma, Retinoblastoma, and Developmental Therapeutics teams, prior to joining the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center and Rady Children's Hospital in 2016.

Dr. Zage is an expert in the treatment of the pediatric solid tumors neuroblastoma and retinoblastoma, and his laboratory is focused on developing novel treatments and identifying novel targets for therapies for children with solid tumors. There is a critical need for new treatment options for children with relapsed and refractory solid tumors, and therapies directed against biologically relevant pathways are likely to be more effective with less toxicity. The goals of clinical and translational research in the Zage laboratory are to develop novel treatments and identify novel targets for therapies for children with solid tumors, in order to improve outcomes and to reduce the incidence and severity of the long-term side effects of current therapy. The primary laboratory projects include studies to better understand the pathways involved in the regulation of growth factor receptor trafficking and degradation in tumor cells and their role in tumor growth and treatment response in addition to studies to identify novel therapeutic targets and novel agents synergistic with established therapies. Continued research looks to build on these findings through a better understanding of growth factor receptor trafficking and its link to chemotherapy responses and resistance to targeted therapies and through direct targeting of receptor trafficking as a unique approach to pediatric solid tumor therapy. 

Dr. Zage has received an Award of Excellence from the Texas Society of Medical Oncology in 2007 and a Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology (ASPHO) in 2009 as a result of these projects. He also received the Pediatric Investigator Award at the Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego 8th Annual Pediatric Research Symposium in January 2017. Dr. Zage is a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society of Pediatric Hematology/ Oncology, the American Association for Cancer Research, and the Advances in Neuroblastoma Research Association. He is a member of the Children's Oncology Group Neuroblastoma Biology Committee and of the Scientific Committee for the Beat Childhood Cancer Consortium. He is currently a member of the UCSD Moores Cancer Center in the Solid Tumor Therapeutics program and of the UCSD Center for Drug Discovery Innovation (CDDI), the UCSD Clinical and Translational Research Institute (CTRI), the San Diego Center for Personalized Immunotherapy (SDCPI), and the Biomedical Sciences (BMS) Graduate Program.