Mukesh Verma, PhD

Biography

Mukesh Verma, PhD, is chief of the Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program's (EGRP) Methods and Technologies Branch (MTB) and oversees its research portfolio and initiatives that focus on methods to address epidemiologic data collection, study design and analysis, and to modify technological approaches developed in the context of other research endeavors for use as biomarkers and methods to understand cancer susceptibility.

He is responsible for stimulating research in implication of omics approaches to understand cancer etiology. He represents NCI in Common Fund Programs on Metabolomics, Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity, Human Virome Project (HVP), and the Congressionally-mandated program on Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcome (ECHO). Since joining the NCI, Dr. Verma has championed the visibility of and investment in cancer epigenetics research both within the Institute and across other federal and non-governmental agencies and to raise public awareness about controlling cancer. In this capacity, he was also involved with the former Common Fund Epigenomics Program’s NIH Working Group.

Dr. Verma is the contact person for the funding opportunities “Assay Validation of High Quality Markers for Clinical Studies in Cancer” (PAR-23-313, PAR-23-314) and “Exploratory Grants in Cancer Control” (PAR-21-341). He is also the epigenetics scientific contact for the Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) “Research on HIV-associated Malignancies” (NOT-CA-23-070).

Dr. Verma joined EGRP as a program director in 2004. In 2005, he was appointed acting chief of EGRP's former Analytic Epidemiology Research Branch (AERB). When EGRP reorganized in 2007, he was appointed acting chief of MTB and of the former Host Susceptibility Factors Branch (HSFB), for which he served as acting chief through 2008. Before joining EGRP, he was a program director in NCI's Division of Cancer Prevention (DCP), where he worked in the areas of biomarkers, early detection, risk assessment, and prevention. He also was coordinator of DCP's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Programs. He was on the faculty in the Biochemistry Department of Georgetown University before joining NIH.

He has 184 publications and has edited 6 books in the field of epigenetics, biomarkers, virology, and epidemiology.

Select Publications

Yu CT, Chao BN, Barajas R, et al. An evaluation of the National Institutes of Health grants portfolio: identifying opportunities and challenges for multi-omics research that leverage metabolomics data. Metabolomics. 2022;18(5):29.

Chang HY, Colby SM, Du X, et al. A Practical Guide to Metabolomics Software Development. Anal Chem. 2021;93(4):1912-1923.

Yu B, Zanetti KA, Temprosa M, et al. The Consortium of Metabolomics Studies (COMETS): metabolomics in 47 prospective cohort studies. Am J Epidemiol. 2019;188(6):991-1012.

Beger RD, Dunn WB, Bandukwala A, et al. Towards quality assurance and quality control in untargeted metabolomics studies. Metabolomics. 2019;15(1):4.

Sinha R, Ahsan H, Blaser M, et al. Next steps in studying the human microbiome and health in prospective studies, Bethesda, MD, May 16-17, 2017. Microbiome. 2018;6(1):210.

Verma M, Kumar V. Single cell epigenomics: technology and applications. In: Barh D, Azevedo V, eds. Single-Cell Omics. New York, NY: Elsevier Inc.; 2019: chap 11, 215- 229.

Verma M. Mechanistic and technical challenges in studying the human microbiome and cancer epidemiology. Technol Cancer Res Treat. 2017;16(2):150-158.