Team

Isaac Hilton is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and BioSciences at Rice University and a CPRIT scholar in cancer research. He has interdisciplinary expertise in precision genome and epigenome editing, mechanistically dissecting and engineering human cell functions, and harnessing human cells to better understand and combat diseases.

Research
The goal of our work in the Hilton lab is to better understand how human cells behave so that we and others can ultimately build genetic medicines and cell-based therapeutics to prevent, treat, or cure different classes of human diseases. To accomplish this overarching goal, we develop and apply innovative biomolecular technologies to elucidate and synthetically reshape i) how human genes are expressed, ii) how human cells run biological programs, and iii) how human disease phenotypes manifest and respond to defined perturbations. Our work builds upon our team’s diverse strengths and skillsets, and the expertise of our PI, Dr. Isaac Hilton.

Dr. Hilton was awarded an undergraduate research fellowship to improve drought and heat tolerance in important food crops using functional genomics. After his undergraduate training, he continued research as a PhD student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was awarded two NIH pre-doctoral training grants in both Genetics and Virology, to study human gene regulation, genomics, and tumor virology within the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and Department of Microbiology and Immunology. While at UNC, Dr. Hilton quantified how a novel genetic circuit within a tumor virus can control viral propagation. He also applied emergent high throughput genomics strategies to establish the chromatin configuration of large tumor virus variants among different infected human cancer cells. As a postdoctoral fellow working with Professor Charles Gersbach in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Center for Genomic and Computational Biology at Duke University, Dr. Hilton and his colleagues developed a programmable CRISPR/Cas9-based acetyltransferase. This technology was listed as 6th in The Scientist® magazine’s Top Ten Innovations of 2015, cited as a technology with high potential impact on human health through the facilitation of novel screening platforms, gene therapies and monitoring of disease. While at Duke, Dr. Hilton also earned the Center for Biomolecular and Tissue Engineering Postdoctoral Achievement Award.

In 2018, Dr. Hilton was awarded a start-up recruitment award from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to initiate the research efforts in his lab at Rice University in Houston Texas. Since this time, the Hilton lab has been recognized by other funding agencies who have helped to enable the lab’s mission. The Hilton lab is grateful to these entities; including the Dunn Foundation (funding work to understand how the epigenome influences immune cell functions), DARPA (supporting a multi-lab effort to use synthetic biology to engineer cells as implantable living pharmacies), the NIH NIBIB Trailblazer Award (to program robust and tunable therapeutic functions in human immune cells using modular synthetic circuits), and the NIGMS Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (to understand and engineer biomedically actionable gene control). The lab is also interested in translating and commercializing our work, and to this end Dr. Hilton and other Hilton lab members are inventors on patents related to genome and epigenome editing and human cellular engineering.

Training the Next Generation
Dr. Hilton is grateful to have had exceptional mentors throughout his career. He is dedicated to continuing this tradition by actively cultivating, and continually refining, a philosophy of mentorship and training that empowers the next generation of skilled leaders in biomedicine and engineering. Dr. Hilton strives to ensure that each of his trainees is supported and encouraged to grow into independent, world-class researchers who excel as leaders in academic, entrepreneurial, industrial, governmental, commercial, and/or other employment sectors.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Dr. Hilton is a first-generation college student from a highly socio-economically disadvantaged background. He is also an advocate for, and lives with, autoimmunological and neurological disorders. He builds upon his experiences and that of his peers and other allies in the community to create a supportive and inclusive environment, and to help facilitate a more societally representative cadre of future leaders in biomedicine and engineering. Including and welcoming a greater diversity of backgrounds, people, and perspectives in STEM fields, and in society more generally, is urgently needed and will result in better and more equitable science for all. Dr. Hilton, and all Hilton lab members are interested and involved in community outreach, REU/RET programs, and other activities to support inclusion, equity, and diversity.