David Wallace

I am a Professor and Chair of Pharmacology & Physiology at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences and Co-Director of the OSU Interdisciplinary Toxicology Program. My scholarship and teaching across medical and graduate curricula are unified by a central goal: defining how environmental exposures reprogram cellular signaling, metabolism, and immune responses to drive chronic disease, with long-standing emphases in neurotoxicology and cancer biology. I have developed broad, hands-on expertise in in vivo and in vitro pharmacology, neurochemical and toxicological methods, advanced cell culture, imaging, and mechanistic pathway analysis. My laboratory connects functional phenotyping (cell viability, oxidative and inflammatory stress, mitochondrial health, and cell behavior endpoints) with molecular profiling. Current work investigates the underlying causes of cachexia associated with pancreatic cancer, the potential involvement of common chemotherapeutic agents and the search for viable pharmacological interventions. Recent work combines chronic exposure paradigms with targeted transcriptomics (nCounter pathway panels) and complementary data mining of cancer proteogenomic resources to prioritize pathways and candidate biomarkers. A major focus of my current program is elucidating mechanisms by which persistent and emerging toxicants—including PFAS (notably chronic PFOA exposure), microplastic-associated chemicals, phthalates, and select metal/metal-oxide stressors—promote pro-tumorigenic phenotypes in pancreatic models. We interrogate coordinated dysregulation across the PI3K–Akt–mTOR axis (AKT, mTOR, RICTOR, RAPTOR, PTEN), transcriptional control nodes (FOXO1/FOXO3, GATA4/GATA6), mitochondrial quality control and longevity regulators (SIRT1, PINK1, PARKIN), extracellular matrix remodeling (MMP2/MMP9), and immune-metabolic signaling (including IDO1/IDO2 and innate immune receptors). We integrate these mechanistic endpoints with advanced genomics, including bulk and single-cell sequencing, to resolve exposure-driven cell-state heterogeneity and to link molecular signatures to functional outcomes. I maintain active national and international collaborations to strengthen rigor and expand expertise, including an international research group with Dr. Aleksandra Buha Djordjevic (University of Belgrade) and Dr. Pinar Uysal-Onganer (University of Westminster). As a department chair and program leader, I have a sustained record of mentoring trainees and junior faculty and of building interdisciplinary teams. These experiences position me to lead extramurally supported projects that integrate toxicology, systems biology, and cancer mechanisms while training the next generation of scientists in rigorous experimental design and quantitative data interpretation.