Dr. Asfar Azmi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Oncology, Wayne State University School of Medicine. He is the Co-Leader of Tumor Biology and Microenvironment Program and the Director of Pancreas Cancer Research Program at Karmanos Cancer Institute. He is also cancer biology graduate faculty at Wayne State University School of Medicine. He serves on the cancer biology graduate program steering committee and Karmanos Cancer Institute clinical fellowship research training committee. He has a track record in the area of tumor microenvironment, epigenetics, non-coding RNAs and drug discovery research. His work broadly focuses on designing, developing and testing new small molecule drugs in a wide variety of solid tumors especially pancreatic cancer and Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Dr. Azmi has made significant contributions in the area of pre-clinical and early phase development of nuclear export inhibitor selinexor. Work done by his team led to the FDA approval of selinexor in multiple myeloma. Dr. Azmi is part of ongoing trials on selinexor (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT02178436 (for pancreatic cancer) and NCT03147885 (for NHL)]. Additionally, his work was instrumental in the translation of PAK4-NAMPT dual inhibitor KPT-9274 (topic of this grant) in Phase I. Dr. Azmi has published more than 50 research articles and another 50 reviews and editorials. These publications are in prestigious journals such as Gastroenterology, Clinical Cancer Research, Oncogene, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, Nature Reviews Gastroenterology and Hepatology and Seminars in Cancer Biology. He has edited several books on drug discovery topics. He has also edited many thematic issues on cancer related topics for Seminars in Cancer Biology. He is the recipient of NIH MERIT award, Wayne State Academy of Scholar Young Investigator Award, Young Investigator Award from American Society of Hematology, American Pancreatic Association and Young Investigator Award from AACR. He has received college teaching award from Wayne State and Heroes of Cancer award from Karmanos Cancer Institute. His lab has been continuously funded by NIH and pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Azmi has developed several graduate level cancer drug discovery courses and has mentored many clinical fellows, residents and postdoctoral fellows. Majority of these trainees have progressed from his lab into independent faculty positions.