Our Team: Steve W. Cole, Ph.D.
Steve W. Cole, Ph.D.
Vice President, Research
Dr. Steve Cole guides HopeLab’s scientific research programs, which shape the development of our new interventions and test their impact on health. He also ensures that HopeLab’s interactive technology solutions incorporate the most up-to-date findings from medical and behavioral science. Dr. Cole played a key role in developing HopeLab’s first product, the Re-Mission video game for cancer, and the publication of research evaluating its efficacy in the medical journal Pediatrics . Dr. Cole now leads HopeLab’s efforts to understand through research how social technologies impact the mind and body to improve the health of young people.
As an active biomedical scientist, Dr. Cole also serves as an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology-Oncology at UCLA. His research analyzes how social factors influence gene expression in the immune system (references 1-2), viruses (e.g., HIV-1; 3-10) and cancer (e.g., ovarian cancer, Kapossi’s sarcoma; 11-13). His laboratory develops new mathematical tools for analyzing complex gene networks in cancer and infectious diseases (14-16). One of his recent studies (1) was cited as one of Discover Magazine’s Top 100 Science Stories of 2007 .
Dr. Cole is a member of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Norman Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, the UCLA AIDS Institute, and the UCLA Molecular Biology Institute. He has also served as a scientific consultant to the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Aging, and the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences, and as a scientific fellow and instructor at the Santa Fe Institute for Complex Systems.
Dr. Cole received his Ph.D. in Psychology in 1992 from Stanford University and his B.A. with highest honors, in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He completed an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship in Health Psychology at UCLA (1996) and a second Postdoctoral Fellowship in molecular virology in the Norman Cousins Program at UCLA (1998). He has since served as an Assistant Research Biologist, Assistant Professor, and Associate Professor of Medicine at UCLA, where he also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences.
Dr. Cole is a frequent presenter at research meetings and the author of more than 50 peer-reviewed scientific publications. His research is funded by grants from the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, the National Institute of Aging, the MacArthur Foundation, and the James Pendelton Charitable Trust. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society, and the American Statistical Association.
Representative Publications
1. Cole, S. W., Hawkley, L. C., Arevalo, J. M., Sung, C. Y., Rose, R. M., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2007). Social regulation of gene expression in human leukocytes. Genome Biology, 8, R189.
2. Miller, G. E., Chen, E., Sze, J., Marin, T., Doll, R., Ma, R., & Cole, S. W. (2008). A genomic fingerprint of chronic stress in humans: Blunted glucocorticoid and increased NF-kappaB signaling. Biological Psychiatry, 64, 266-272.
3. Sloan, E. K., Capitanio, J. P., Tarara, R. P., Mendoza, S. P., Mason, W. A., & Cole, S. W. (2007). Social stress enhances sympathetic innervation of primate lymph nodes: Mechanisms and implications for viral pathogenesis. The Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 8857-8865.
4. Collado-Hidalgo, A., Sung, C., and Cole, S. W. (2006). Adrenergic inhibition of innate antiviral response: PKA blockade of Type I interferon gene transcription mediates catecholamine support for HIV-1 replication. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 20, 552-563.
5. Sloan, E. K., Tarara, R. P., Capitanio, J. P., & Cole, S. W. (2006). Enhanced SIV replication adjacent to catecholaminergic varicosities in primate lymph nodes. Journal of Virology, 80, 4326-4335.
6. Cole, S. W., Kemeny, M. E., Fahey, J. L., Zack, J. A. & Naliboff, B. D. (2003). Psychological risk factors for HIV pathogenesis: Mediation by the autonomic nervous system. Biological Psychiatry, 54, 1444-1456.
7. Cole, S. W., Naliboff, B. D., Kemeny, M. E., Griswold, M., Fahey, J. L., & Zack, J. A. (2001). Impaired response to HAART in patients with high autonomic nervous system activity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 98, 12695-12670.
8. Cole, S. W., Korin, Y. D., Fahey, J. L., & Zack, J. A. (1998). Norepinephrine accelerates HIV replication via protein kinase A-dependent effects on cytokine production. Journal of Immunology, 161, 610-616.
9. Cole, S. W., Jamieson, B. D., & Zack, J. A. (1999). cAMP externalizes lymphocyte CXCR4: Implications for chemotaxis and HIV infection. Journal of Immunology, 162, 1392-1400.
10. Cole, S., Kemeny, M., Taylor, S., Visscher, B., & Fahey, J. (1996). Accelerated course of Human Immunodeficiency Virus infection in gay men who conceal their homosexual identity. Psychosomatic Medicine, 58, 219-231.
11. Chang, M., Brown, H. J., Collado-Hidalgo, A., Arevalo, J. M., Galic, Z., Symensma, T. L., Tanaka, L., Deng, H., Zack, J. A., Sun, R., & Cole, S. W. (2005). Beta adrenoreceptors reactivate Kaposi’s Sarcoma-associated Herpesvirus lytic replication via PKA-dependent control of viral RTA. Journal of Virology, 79, 13538-13547.
12. Lutgendorf, S. K., McGinn, S., Sung, C. Y., Arevalo, J. M., DeGeest, K., Penedo, F., Lucci, J., Lubaroff, D., Sood, A. K., & Cole, S. W. (2008). Depression, social support, and beta-adrenergic transcription control in human ovarian cancer. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, in press.
13. Thaker, P. H., Han, L. Y., Kamat, A. A., Arevalo, J., Takahashi, R., Lu, C., Jennings, N. B., Armaiz-Pena, G., Bankson, J. A., Ravoori, M., Merritt, W. M., Lin, Y. G., Mangala, L. S., Kim, T. J., Coleman, R. L., Landen, C. N., Li, Y., Felix, E., Newman, R. A., Lloyd, M., Gershenson, D. M., Kundra, V., Lopez-Berestein, G., Lutgendorf, S. K., Cole, S. W., & Sood, A. K. (2006). Chronic stress promotes tumor growth and angiogenesis in ovarian carcinoma. Nature Medicine, 12, 939-942.
14. Cole, S. W., Yan, W., Galic, Z., Arevalo, J., & Zack, J. A. (2005). Expression-based monitoring of transcription factor activity: The TELiS database. Bioinformatics, 21, 803-810.
15. Cole, S. W., Galic, Z., & Zack, J. A. (2003). Controlling false negative errors in microarray differential expression analysis: A PRIM approach. Bioinformatics, 19, 1808-1816.
16. Cole, S. (1997). Blind T cell homeostasis and HIV infection. Immunology Today, 18, 505-506.