Tracy Stewart, MA, PhD

Dr. Tracy Murray Stewart is an Assistant Professor of Oncology at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins. Her laboratory focuses on understanding the polyamine metabolic pathway in both healthy and disease states, with the goal of exploiting its self-homeostatic control mechanisms as a means for therapeutic intervention. Ongoing studies are aimed at defining the specific roles of HDAC10, a class IIb histone deacetylase with substrate preference for N8-acetylspermidine over acetylated histones and other proteins. This unique substrate specificity has allowed the generation of polyamine-based compounds capable of uniquely targeting HDAC10, without affecting other HDAC enzymes. A member of the Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics Program, her laboratory is using these molecules to determine the roles of HDAC10 in modulating cancer progression.

Dr. Stewart is also recognized for expertise in the rare X-linked neurodevelopmental condition Snyder-Robinson syndrome (SRS). She along with Dr. Robert Casero, Jr. and their team at Johns Hopkins University, were recognized by the Snyder-Robinson Foundation as the 2020 Outstanding Researchers for key research that has resulted in a better understanding of polyamine ratios in SRS patient cells. Importantly, they discovered that the polyamine imbalance characteristic of SRS can be corrected by agents that utilize the polyamine transport system, expanding potential treatment options to include difluoromethylornithine (DFMO), an existing, FDA-approved drug, alone or in combination with a spermine mimetic. Her laboratory continues to investigate this potential in addition to further understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying the disease phenotype.