Launce Gouw, MD, PhD, is an assistant professor in the University of Utah School of Medicine and a Huntsman Cancer Institute investigator and physician.

Gouw is an attending physician with the multidisciplinary Sarcoma Service at HCI. His research background is in the fields of Human Molecular Genetics and Bioinformatics. Although much of his scientific training is in basic laboratory biology, his recent outlook is more translational in scope. As such, his current research focus includes Sarcoma clinical trials, in particular experimental therapeutics with novel targeted agents. His specific interests include the molecular characterization and genetic determinants of cancer and the genomic conditions promoting malignancy.

He finds Sarcoma an intriguing research field due to the complexity of the differing sub-phenotypes and underlying genotypes. He believes that elucidating biological pathways with subsequent development of biomarkers and therapies specific to the disease processes will eventually overcome the rarity and refractory nature of Sarcoma which currently make it a difficult disease to study and treat.

Gouw received his undergraduate degree at Amherst College. He has previous research training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Cancer Research (now the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research), and both an MD and PhD (in Human Genetics) from the University of Utah School of Medicine.

As a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Fellow, he carried out his dissertation work in the laboratory of the first Director of the HCI, Ray White, PhD. He has therefore been with the HCI since its inception, as he did his housestaff training and Fellowship with the University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics and the HCI. He received much of his Sarcoma-specific Medical Oncology mentoring from Lei Chen, MD, PhD and Karen Albritton MD.

Before joining HCI, Gouw worked as an attending physician with the Salt Lake Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) and as a staff physician with Utah Cancer Specialists. With his prior connection to Utah’s largest community oncology group, he hopes to foster research links between academic and community practice to further Sarcoma research in the Intermountain West. He also currently continues as an attending at the Salt Lake VAMC.