Brian Gudenas Ph.D. ’18
Gudenas’ passion for research advances knowledge of pediatric cancers
Brian Gudenas thrives on the mystery of research.
“There’s always something unknown, always something to discover,” says Gudenas, who earned his Ph.D. in genetics from Clemson University in 2018. “I like being able to answer questions that nobody knew the answer to before. I want to be on the cutting edge of knowledge.”
Gudenas channels that passion into advancing the understanding of childhood cancers and other pediatric catastrophic diseases as a senior bioinformatics research scientist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, one of the world’s leading pediatric cancer research and treatment centers.
“I have always been heavily interested in human health and what determines disease. Cancer is one of the most complex diseases there is,” he says. “Each cancer is quite unique in and of itself.”
Over his seven years at St. Jude, Gudenas has been on research teams focused on medulloblastoma, the most common type
of primary malignant brain tumor in children, as well as pineoblastoma, a rare and aggressive pediatric brain cancer that starts in the
pineal gland.
Gudenas worked on a St. Jude team that identified a novel ELP1 gene mutation driving the formation of a medulloblastoma subtype called Sonic Hedgehog medulloblastoma. The Sonic Hedgehog protein, a key developmental signaling molecule, was named after the video game character because when the gene in fruit flies was mutated, it developed a spiky hedgehog-like appearance.
He was also part of a research group that identified the molecular subgroups of pineoblastoma, each with distinct driver mutations, demographic features and clinical survival outcomes. These subgroups are now included in the World Health Organization classifications.
Gudenas didn’t always envision a career in cancer research. As an undergraduate at the University of Colorado — Colorado Springs, he initially planned to become a pharmacist.
“I became more interested in the research side of things. It’s an ever-expanding field, and you never know what the next discovery is going to be,” he says.
When it came time for graduate school, Gudenas chose Clemson, his parents’ alma mater. They met while working at a Wendy’s restaurant near campus. The restaurant was torn down while Gudenas was working on his Ph.D.
At Clemson, Gudenas joined the lab of Associate Professor L.J. Wang, which specialized in bioinformatics — the fusion of biology, mathematics, statistics and computer programming. There, his work focused on long noncoding RNAs, or genes that don’t produce proteins, to study autism spectrum disorders.
“The ultimate dream is to discover something that changes lives. That was one of my main inspirations to go to St. Jude — to do research that can be translatable into the clinical setting,” he says.
FUN FACT: Gudenas is an artist working primarily in colored pencil, a passion that began around age 7 when he started taking art classes in the back room of a Hobby Lobby store.
