Dr. Melkus is a native of the Texas Panhandle born in Amarillo, TX. He did his undergraduate work at TTU and earned his Ph.D. in Immunology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. His dissertation work focused on developing a functional human immune system in a mouse model to study human tropic infectious diseases (HIV). He completed postdoctoral fellowships at ISTEM and Paul Brousse Hospital in France studying Chronic Myeloid Leukemia and hematopoiesis derived from embryonic stem cells. After returning from overseas, he did a post-doctoral fellowship investigating prostate cancer stem cells at Amarillo School of Pharmacy, TTUHSC. He joined the TTUHSC faculty in the Department of Pediatrics School of Medicine, Amarillo in 2015 as a Research Assistant Professor. Dr. Melkus was recruited to the Department of Surgery in Lubbock to work with Dr. Rahman, a breast cancer surgeon, researching the immune response (abscopal effect) following cryoablation of breast cancer.
Interests
- Breast health/cancer
- Cancer
- Hematology
- Infectious disease