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Richmond, VA — VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center is pleased to announce the appointment of Venkata Battula, Ph.D., as assistant director of Massey’s Cancer Research Training and Education Coordination Efforts (CRTEC). Battula will also serve as an associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the VCU School of Medicine. 

Battula joins VCU Massey from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where he served as an associate professor in the departments of leukemia and breast medical oncology in the Division of Cancer Medicine. He holds a Ph.D. in Human Cell Biology from Justus Liebeg University in Giessen, Germany and brings a strong background in translational cancer research to Massey’s cancer research team. 

“The goal of my research is to understand how cancer escapes from the standard chemotherapy, radiation, and targeted therapies; identify novel drug resistance mechanisms; and develop novel combination therapies” said Battula. 

Battula’s work helped identify a new marker in patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) called GD2. TNBC is an aggressive and heterogeneous type of breast cancer with few therapeutic options due to being resistant to anti-hormone and anti-HER2 therapies. GD2 is a marker expressed on cancer stem cells that contributes to cell division and correlates with worse outcomes. Battula’s work assessing the clinical implications of GD2 as a target for TNBC recently earned funding from the U.S. Department of Defense to launch a clinical trial. 

Within CRTEC, Battula would like to strengthen graduate-level opportunities and programs. “I’ve always liked to participate in graduate educational programs,” said Battula. “This position gives me an opportunity to impact the next generation of students at Massey, and I’m looking forward to it.

At Massey, Battula plans to expand his work by developing additional clinical trials, collaborating with clinicians and pharmaceutical industry leaders to bring access to life saving drugs to cancer patients, and interacting with students to mentor the next generation of cancer researchers. He aims to leverage the wealth of scientific knowledge gained from years of cancer research to create novel and effective therapeutics: “I believe future cancer research depends on how we translate the knowledge we have gained after decades of cancer research for drug development—there is an urgent need for these drugs, and the patients need them right now.”

Battula joined Massey effective June 30, 2025.

Written by: Katherine Nowak, Kassidy Jungles, and Emily Kukan