Nicole N. Scheff, PhD

  • Assistant Professor

Phone

412-623-7871

E-mail

NNS18@pitt.edu

Personal Website

schefflab.pitt.edu

Education & Training

PhD, University of Pittsburgh (2014)

Campus Address

Hillman Cancer Center Research Pavilion Suite 1.19F

Research Grants

The Scheff lab collaborates with Dr. Marci Nilsen, College of Nursing, and Dr. Tullia Bruno, Department of Immunology on a project regarding the role of immune-derived opioids in cancer pain treatment funded by CTSI 2021 Virginia Kaufman Pain Challenge Award.

Graduation Year

2014

One-Line Research Description

Neurobiology of head and neck cancer and orofacial pain

The goal of our research is to understand plasticity in peripheral neurons associated with cancer and to investigate whether therapy targeted to neurons in the cancer microenvironment can alleviate pain and slow tumorigenesis. The lab executes translational research through collection of patient-reported outcomes and clinical specimens as well as implementation of molecular, electrophysiological and behavioral studies in preclinical mouse models.

Representative Publications

Scheff NN, Alemu RG, Klares RIII, Wall IM, Yang SC, Dolan JC, Schmidt BL. Granulocyte-colony stimulating factor-induced neutrophil recruitment provides opioid-mediated endogenous anti-nociception in female mice with oral squamous cell carcinoma. Front. Mol. Neurosci. 2019 Sep 16;12:217 [PMID: 31607857]

Scheff NN, Ye Y, Conley ZR, Quan JW, Lam YR, Klares RIII, Singh K, Dolan JC, Schmidt BL, Aouizerat BE. ADAM17-EGFR signaling contributes to oral cancer pain. PAIN. 2020 Oct;161 (10):2330-2343. [PMID: 32453136]

Demir IE, Reyes CM, Alrawashdeh W, Ceyhan GO, Deborde S, Friess H, Görgülü K, Istvanffy R, Jungwirth D, Kuner R, Maryanovich M, Na’ara S, Renders S, Saloman JL, Scheff NN, Steenfadt H, Stupakov P, Thiel V, Verma D, Yilmaz BS, White RA, Wang TC, Wong RJ, Frenette PS, Gil Z, Davis BM. Clinically Actional Strategies for Studying Neural Influences in Cancer. Cancer Cell. 2020 Jul 13;38(1):11-14. [PMID: 32531270]

Pineda Farias JB, Saloman JL, Scheff NN. Animal models of cancer-related pain: current perspectives in translation. Front. Pharm. 2020 Nov 26;11:610894. [PMID: 33381048]

Demir IE, Reyes CM, Alrawashdeh W, Ceyhan GO, Deborde S, Friess H, Görgülü K, Istvanffy R, Jungwirth D, Kuner R, Maryanovich M, Na’ara S, Renders S, Saloman JL, Scheff NN, Steenfadt H, Stupakov P, Thiel V, Verma D, Yilmaz BS, White RA, Wang TC, Wong RJ, Frenette PS, Gil Z, Davis BM. Future directions in preclinical and translational cancer neuroscience research. Nat Cancer. 2021 Nov;1:1027-1031. [PMID: 34327335]

Scheff NN, Saloman JL. Neuroimmunology of cancer and associated symptomology. Immunol Cell Biol. 2021 Oct;99(9):949-961. doi: 10.1111/imcb.12496. [PMID: 34355434]

Dissertation

Alumni Current Affiliation

Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh