Rate My Professor Daria Gaykalova

Daria A. Gaykalova, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Otorhinolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She earned a B.Sc. in Molecular Biology from Moscow State University in Moscow, Russia, in 2004, an M.Sc. in Molecular Biology (Magna Cum Laude) in 2005, and a Diploma of Honors Degree (Magna Cum Laude) from the same university. In 2009, she received her Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, NJ.

Dr. Gaykalova's career trajectory includes serving as Research Assistant in the Department of Molecular Biology at Moscow State University (2003-2004) and in the Department of Pharmacology at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (2004-2005), followed by her Ph.D. training there (2005-2009). She completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD (2009-2014), advanced to Instructor (2014-2016), and then Assistant Professor (2016-2020). Since 2020, she has held her current position at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and joined the faculty of the Institute for Genome Sciences. As head of a translational laboratory, she investigates the functional role of epigenetics in transcriptional regulation, mutational burden, and the immunological landscape of tumors, with a focus on head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). Her research elucidates chromatin's role as a driver of viral integration, cancer-specific gene expression, and alternative splicing events in HNSCC, aiming to identify tumor-type-specific epigenetic and targeted treatments. Key scientific contributions include discovering the mechanism of RNA polymerase II transcription through chromatin, the role of the first transcribed nucleosome in transcription regulation, BORIS transcription factor's epigenetic modulation in HNSCC, the landscape of alternative splicing in HPV-positive and HPV-negative HNSCC, chromatin's involvement in HNSCC development and HPV integration, the NOTCH pathway's role in HNSCC, and primary DNA methylation markers for HNSCC. Notable publications are 'Nucleosomes can form a polar barrier to transcript elongation by RNA polymerase II' (Molecular Cell, 2006), 'Activation of the NOTCH Pathway in Head and Neck Cancer' (Cancer Research, 2014), 'Integrated analysis of whole-genome ChIP-Seq and RNA-Sequencing data of primary tumor samples associates HPV integration sites with open chromatin marks' (Cancer Research, 2017), 'Differentially Methylated Super-Enhancers Regulate Target Gene Expression in Human Cancer' (Scientific Reports, 2019), and 'HPV E2, E4, E5 drive alternative carcinogenic pathways in HPV positive cancers' (Oncogene, 2020). Supported by NIH awards, her expertise encompasses high-throughput analyses, CRISPR, and functional evaluations in preclinical and patient-derived models.