Dr. Fabio P. Gomes – Principal Investigator

Dr. Gomes is a Brazilian citizen and U.S. permanent resident. He is an Afro-Brazilian, born and raised in Sao Paulo (Brazil), where he completed both his undergraduate degree (2004) and a master’s degree (2008) with graduate research in Pharmaceutical Sciences. Before undertaking doctoral research, Dr. Gomes spent several years working at AstraZeneca. He then moved to the University of Queensland, Australia, to complete his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry (2016). During his Ph.D., Dr. Gomes was a visiting scientist at the Saarland University (Germany). After graduation, Dr. Gomes moved to the U.S., where he held postdoctoral positions in two world-renowned proteomics labs: first with Dr. Catherine Fenselau at the University of Maryland (2017–2018) and with Dr. John R. Yates, III at Scripps Research (2018–2023). He is currently starting his independent career at the Virginia Commonwealth University (2023).

Kanchan Pathak – Ph.D. student

Kanchan Pathak is from Nepal where she completed both her Bachelor (2017) and Master degree (2019) in Chemistry (Tribhuvan University). Before joining Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Ms. Kanchan worked as researcher at National Institute of Materials Science (Japan). She is currently a PhD student at VCU (Department of Chemistry). Ms. Kanchan joined the Gomes Lab in the Fall 2023, where she develops mass spectrometry-based methods to interrogate proteoforms and their complexoforms within the cells. She is especially interested in understanding the structure-function relationship of nuclear receptors when activated by small lipid-soluble molecules. 

Spencer Sabet - Ph.D. student

Spencer Sabet grew up in the Richmond, VA area and received his B.S. in Chemistry from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2017. While earning his B.S., he performed research focused on method development and statistical analysis for GC-MS/MS analysis of small molecules. He returned to VCU as a PhD student in Fall 2022, and joined the Gomes Lab in Fall 2023. Spencer’s research focus is on developing nTDP approaches to investigate the hypothesis that the biological actions of estrogen and antiestrogen drugs in the development of metastatic breast tumors and drug resistance are regulated by ER proteoforms and complexoforms.