Jason Gertz

Jason Gertz, PhD

Languages spoken: English

Academic Information

Departments Primary - Oncological Sciences

Jay Gertz, PhD, is an Investigator at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) and a Professor in the Department of Oncological Sciences at the University of Utah. He is also a co-Leader of the Genomics, Epigenetics, and Metabolism Program at HCI and an Adjunct Professor in Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Gertz studies the role of steroid hormones and their receptors in cancer.

Steroid hormones and their receptors play large roles in many tissues and biological processes. This includes the control of growth and differentiation, making steroid hormone receptors effective drug targets for cancer treatment. Dr. Gertz’s research goal is to improve the treatment of hormone-related cancers, including endometrial cancer and breast cancer, through a better understanding of how steroid hormone receptors regulate gene expression and which proteins control their activity. To determine how steroid hormones impact endometrial and breast cancers, his lab utilizes and develops experimental methods that leverage high-throughput sequencing to create fine-resolution maps of gene regulation. The Gertz lab also uses cutting-edge computational approaches to take full advantage of these rich genomic datasets. An improved understanding of steroid hormones in cancer promises to uncover new therapeutic options for cancer patients and to identify which patients would most benefit from hormone therapy.


Dr. Gertz received a BA in Mathematics with concentrations in Computer Science and Economics from Cornell University in 2003. In 2008, he received a PhD in Computational Biology from Washington University School of Medicine. He was a postdoctoral fellow in Richard M. Myers’ laboratory at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, where he was funded in part by the American Cancer Society. To learn more about the Gertz lab, please visit http://www.huntsmancancer.org/gertzlab.

Selected Publications

Journal Article

  1. Abewe H, Richey A, Vahrenkamp JM, Ginley-Hidinger M, Rush CM, Kitchen N, Zhang X, Gertz J (2025). Estrogen-induced chromatin looping changes identify a subset of functional regulatory elements. Genome Res, 35(3), 393-403. (Read full article)
  2. Ginley-Hidinger M, Abewe H, Osborne K, Richey A, Kitchen N, Mortenson KL, Wissink EM, Lis J, Zhang X, Gertz J (2024). Cis-regulatory control of transcriptional timing and noise in response to estrogen. Cell Genom, 4(5), 100542. (Read full article)
  3. Blanchard Z, Rush CM, Arnesen S, Vahrenkamp JM, Rodriguez AC, Jarboe EA, Brown C, Chang MEK, Flory MR, Mohammed H, Modzelewska K, Lum DH, Gertz J (2022). Allele-Specific Gene Regulation, Phenotypes, and Therapeutic Vulnerabilities in Estrogen Receptor Alpha-Mutant Endometrial Cancer. Mol Cancer Res, 21(10), 1023-1036. (Read full article)
  4. Arnesen S, Polaski JT, Blanchard Z, Osborne KS, Welm AL, OConnell RM, Gertz J (2023). Estrogen receptor alpha mutations regulate gene expression and cell growth in breast cancer through microRNAs. NAR Cancer, 5(2), zcad027. (Read full article)
  5. Rush CM, Blanchard Z, Polaski JT, Osborne KS, Osby K, Vahrenkamp JM, Yang CH, Lum DH, Hagan CR, Leslie KK, Pufall MA, Thiel KW, Gertz J (2022). Characterization of HCI-EC-23 a novel estrogen- and progesterone-responsive endometrial cancer cell line. Sci Rep, 12(1), 19731. (Read full article)
  6. Arnesen S, Blanchard Z, Williams MM, Berrett KC, Li Z, Oesterreich S, Richer JK, Gertz J (2020). Estrogen Receptor Alpha Mutations in Breast Cancer Cells Cause Gene Expression Changes through Constant Activity and Secondary Effects. Cancer Res, 81(3), 539-551. (Read full article)
  7. Carleton JB, Ginley-Hidinger M, Berrett KC, Layer RM, Quinlan AR, Gertz J (2020). Regulatory sharing between estrogen receptor α bound enhancers. Nucleic Acids Res, 48(12), 6597-6610. (Read full article)
  8. Rodriguez AC, Vahrenkamp JM, Berrett KC, Clark KA, Guillen KP, Scherer SD, Yang CH, Welm BE, Jant-Amsbury MM, Graves BJ, Gertz J (2020). ETV4 Is Necessary for Estrogen Signaling and Growth in Endometrial Cancer Cells. Cancer Res, 80(6), 1234-1245. (Read full article)
  9. Vahrenkamp JM, Szczotka K, Dodson MK, Jarboe EA, Soisson AP, Gertz J (2019). FFPEcap-seq: a method for sequencing capped RNAs in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded samples. Genome Res, 29(11), 1826-1835. (Read full article)
  10. Blanchard Z, Vahrenkamp JM, Berrett KC, Arnesen S, Gertz J (2019). Estrogen-independent molecular actions of mutant estrogen receptor 1 in endometrial cancer. Genome Res, 29(9), 1429-1441. (Read full article)
  11. Vahrenkamp JM, Yang CH, Rodriguez AC, Almomen A, Berrett KC, Trujillo AN, Guillen KP, Welm BE, Jarboe EA, Janat-Amsbury MM, Gertz J (2018). Clinical and Genomic Crosstalk between Glucocorticoid Receptor and Estrogen Receptor α In Endometrial Cancer. Cell Rep, 22(11), 2995-3005. (Read full article)
  12. Carleton JB, Berrett KC, Gertz J (2017). Multiplex Enhancer Interference Reveals Collaborative Control of Gene Regulation by Estrogen Receptor α-Bound Enhancers. Cell Syst, 5(4), 333-344.e5. (Read full article)

News & Podcasts

Huntsman Cancer Institute News