The Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) has more than 130 members from across the Illinois campus. Given the great variety in backgrounds, research disciplines, and experiences of our members, we offer our Q&A series “Get to Know a Cancer Researcher” to provide readers a connection with the amazing array of individuals who comprise the CCIL’s robust cancer research team. This is the ninth installment.
CCIL Member: Auinash Kalsotra
CCIL Research Program: Cancer Engineering & Biological Systems
CCIL Research Theme: Mechanistic and Quantitative Biology
Faculty Position: Professor, Biochemistry
What originally drew you to cancer research?
It wasn’t a single lightning bolt moment. It has been more of a slow gravitational pull. I have been fascinated by how cells make decisions at the molecular level, and cancer is the ultimate case of a cell gone “rogue.” At some point, I realized that the questions I find most intellectually gripping, such as how genes are regulated in time and space, or how cells read changing physiological cues to adjust their genetic output, are the same questions that lie at the heart of cancer.
What cancer problems are you seeking to address in your lab?
We have started to focus on liver cancer, specifically the kind that develops in people with alcoholic or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. This is a massive and growing problem, and yet it remains under the radar compared to other cancers. What makes our approach a little different is that we look at it through the lens of RNA biology, particularly RNA splicing. Most people think of cancer as a DNA story: mutations, deletions, amplifications. But there is this whole other layer: how genes are read and processed. Splicing errors are common in cancer, and they can completely rewire a cell’s behavior. In diseased livers, that goes haywire in ways we are only beginning to understand. My lab is trying to decode this language and what we can do about it.
What keeps you going in your research? How do you recharge?
Honestly, it is mostly stubbornness. Science hands you a lot of failure: experiments that don’t work, hypotheses that collapse, grants and papers that get rejected. But then you get results that surprise you, moments where something that was murky suddenly comes into focus, and you remember why you do this.
My lab members also keep me going. Watching my trainees find their footing and start asking their own questions never gets old. There is something deeply satisfying about watching a student arrive uncertain and leave thinking like a real scientist.
As for recharging, I step away from the bench (metaphorically) and do things that have nothing to do with science.
What are fun or quirky facts about you that others may not know?
I play the harmonium and experiment with singing Indian semi-classical music. Never took a single formal music lesson, just picked it up, fell in love with it, kept going. There is something meditative about it I can’t quite explain. Something about playing or listening to a raga after a long day resets everything.
The other thing that surprises people is that I ride a Harley. I love taking it out on the weekend to small towns in Illinois, the kind of places with one diner, zero traffic, and genuinely friendly strangers. It is the best way I know to clear my head. So, yes, somewhere between raga music and Route 66 vibes, that is me.
Can you tell us a favorite film or book of yours?
Book: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. It asks one of the most interesting questions imaginable: why did history unfold the way it did across different civilizations? And then actually tries to answer it with evidence. As a scientist, I love that ambition. It has changed how I think about causality and complex systems. Highly recommend it to anyone who wants their brain rearranged a little.
Film: Pulp Fiction. I have seen it more times than I can count, and I still notice something new. The structure, the dialogue, the way Tarantino treats time– it is masterful storytelling.
What accomplishment(s) are you most proud of, and why?
The work I am most proud of isn’t any single paper or grant; it is building a lab culture where people feel supported in taking risks and asking hard questions. Science can be a tough environment. The pressure is real, the timelines are brutal, and it is easy for things to go sideways, which is hard on students and trainees.
On the science side, I am proud that our work on RNA splicing in liver regeneration and disease is opening up questions that were not on anyone’s radar a few years ago. Being early to something that turns out to matter feels good.
What is the best advice you’ve ever received, and how has it shaped your research career?
Someone told me in graduate school to “Fall in love with the question, not the answer.” It sounds simple, but it is surprisingly hard to practice. There is enormous pressure in science to chase results, to confirm what you already suspect, or to tell a clean story. But the most interesting science happens when you stay curious and follow what the data is actually telling you, even when it wrecks your favorite hypothesis. That advice has saved me from a lot of dead ends and opened up a few unexpected doors. I try to pass it on to everyone in my lab.
Stay tuned for more weekly installments in our “Get to Know a Cancer Researcher” series.
Editor’s notes:
Auinash Kalsotra can be reached at kalsotra@illinois.edu.
This story was written by Jonathan King, CCIL Communications Coordinator.