Nina Dashti-Gibson is researching pancreatic cancer and bringing science to the community

By Christopher Richmond

Nina Dashti-Gibson came to cancer research by following a question with few clear answers. As an M.D.-Ph.D. student in Virginia Commonwealth University's Medical Scientist Training Program, Dashti-Gibson works in the lab of Chuck Harrell, Ph.D., in the Department of Pathology at VCU's School of Medicine, searching for weaknesses in one of medicine's most stubborn problems: pancreatic cancer.

"Pancreatic cancer has one of the lowest five-year survival rates, and there's been very little progress on new treatments over the past couple of decades," Dashti-Gibson said. "These are patients who really need new discoveries and hope."

Her research focuses on therapeutic resistance - how pancreatic tumors adapt to treatment, and what can be done to stay one step ahead. The Harrell Lab uses patient-derived models, growing human tumor fragments in controlled environments, to study how individual patients' tumors respond to different drugs. "We're able to understand how a diverse range of patients would respond to the different treatments we're testing," she said.

"Because we know that pancreatic cancer becomes resistant to most anything, we want to get one step ahead and figure out how we can optimize new treatment options to control the disease longer," she said.

That sense of urgency is grounded in her clinical experience. Dashti-Gibson works alongside the medical oncologists who see pancreatic cancer patients in the clinic, an experience she said "really drives home how much this research is needed."

Translating science beyond the lab

Dashti-Gibson is also a T32 scholar in the Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research's Translational Biomedical Sciences training program.

"The T32 has given me a lot of opportunities to practice translating my science to different audiences," Dashti-Gibson said. "It's allowed me to go to conferences and present my research to other scientists. I had the opportunity to present at the Discovery Dialogues seminar, which is aimed at a nonscientific community audience - and explaining the science in that context is obviously very different."

The program also supports scholars in developing a community engagement project, mentored by a community stakeholder. For Dashti-Gibson, that project became something that took on a life of its own.

Brushstrokes of Discovery

Working with Jennifer Koblinski, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Pathology, scientific director of the Tissue and Data, Acquisition and Analysis Core, director of Cancer Mouse Models Core and interim executive director of research infrastructure at VCU, Dashti-Gibson co-led the development of Brushstrokes of Discovery, a mobile community mural project. The idea was rooted in a straightforward observation: much of the research at VCU and Massey is made possible by patients who donate tumor samples, yet those same community members rarely hear what becomes of their contributions.

"A lot of our research is really fueled by the contributions that patients make," Dashti-Gibson said. "We wanted to come up with a way to connect with the community that is driving so much of our research and disseminate back our findings - which in science can take a long time to actually reach the public and are often published in a way that's not accessible to most people."

The solution was a three-panel mobile mural, created by three Richmond artists, Khalid Thompson, Silly Genius, and Rain Spann, and unveiled at a community painting event at RVA Big Market in November 2025. The panels tell the story of cancer research in sequence: the challenge of facing cancer, the lab work made possible by tissue donations, and a vision of a future shaped by the discoveries that work enables. Community members were invited to add their own brushstrokes to the artwork.

From L-R: Paula Bos, Ph.D.; Jennifer Koblinski, Ph.D.; Khalid Thompson, Silly Genius, Rain Spann, Chuck Harrell, Ph.D.; and Nina Dashti-Gibson at the RVA Big Market, Nov. 1, 2025. (Photo by Phillip Newsome, Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center)

The project was funded in part by a Community-Engaged Data Dissemination of Research Findings grant from VCU's Division of Community Engagement in the Office of the Provost, with matching support from Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The collaboration with the artists proved to be its own kind of community engagement.

"None of them had a science background," Dashti-Gibson said. "But they were so willing to learn about our work. They believed in our mission for the project, and they came up with the design themselves based on our very abstract ideas of what we wanted it to look like."

On the day of the painting event, Dashti-Gibson and her collaborators spoke with more than 150 community members. The conversations stayed with her.

"Almost everybody had a story of a family member or a friend with cancer, even some who were treated at Massey, and they were really interested in talking to people who are doing this work," she said. "And also just curious about what the day-to-day actually looks like."

The project also took an unexpected personal turn. One of the three artists, Silly Genius, discovered a mass in his neck around the time he signed on to create the mural's second panel - and, drawn in part by his connection to Koblinski and the Massey team, ultimately received care at Massey. He has since shared his story publicly, adding another dimension to the mural's message about the relationship between researchers and the community they serve.

Since the painting event, the mural has traveled to locations across Richmond, including faith-based organizations and other community centers, stopping approximately every two weeks and inviting communities to engage with its message. It was also featured at the Massey Innovator Forum in May.

A recognition and a reminder

This spring, Dashti-Gibson received VCU's Excellence in Community Engagement Award in the student and postdoctoral fellow category, presented at the university's annual ceremony in May. In nominating her, Koblinski and Harrell noted that Dashti-Gibson "served as a central champion for this initiative, ensuring that engagement was not treated as outreach alone, but as a reciprocal partnership grounded in trust, respect and shared purpose."

Maghboeba Mosavel, Ph.D., vice provost for Community Engagement at VCU, presents Nina Dashti-Gibson with the Excellence in Community Engagement Award in the student and postdoctoral fellow category, May 14, 2026. (Photo by Alliannah Hamilton, VCU Office of the Provost, Division of Community Engagement)

At the ceremony, Dashti-Gibson pointed to the people whose contributions make the research itself possible.

"The patients who donate their tumor samples to research - that's really what inspired this whole endeavor in the first place," she said. "The research I do would not be possible without them being willing to contribute their samples to research during a difficult time in their lives to hopefully lead to better outcomes for others."

For Dashti-Gibson, the day of the painting event clarified something that can be easy to lose sight of in the day-to-day work of a Ph.D.

"It's easy for us to all get stuck in our own little bubbles and the day-to-day challenges of doing research," she said. "But getting out and talking to people and remembering why we do this - and realizing that people are interested in connecting with us - was really eye-opening and inspiring."

Currently working through her Ph.D., Dashti-Gibson plans to return to the clinical portion of her M.D.-Ph.D. once her dissertation is complete. She sees the two tracks as inseparable.

"When we combine medicine and research, we can take knowledge from both worlds and use it to have the biggest impact," she said.

Nina Dashti-Gibson is an M.D.-Ph.D. student in the VCU Medical Scientist Training Program and a T32 scholar in the Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research's Translational Biomedical Sciences training program. The TBS program is funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, grant T32TR004362. For more information, visit cctr.vcu.edu.

To learn more about the Brushstrokes of Discovery project, visit masseycancercenter.org/brushstrokes-community-project.

The project described was in part supported by CTSA award No. UM1TR004360 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent official views of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences or the National Institutes of Health.