Michael Evans BA, PhD

Michael Evans, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in Residence in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at the University of California, San Francisco. He is an experienced chemical biologist with a focus on molecular imaging and organic chemistry. Dr. Evans earned a BA in Chemistry from St. Mary’s College, Maryland and he obtained his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California under the supervision of Professor Benjamin Cravatt, followed by postdoctoral fellowship in Molecular Imaging from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York under the supervision of Professors Charles Sawyers and Jason Lewis. In October 2013, Dr. Evans accepted the Assistant Professor in Residence position at UCSF.

Dr. Evans specializes in small molecule synthesis, proteomics, and preclinical development and translation of new radiotracers, including antibody-based radiotracers. By combining his expertise in chemical biology and molecular imaging, Dr. Evans and his group seek to discover and exploit for imaging biomarkers directly regulated by central oncogenes. To date, he has developed biomarkers measuring the activity of the androgen receptor and MYC in prostate cancer, and his group is now actively developing new imaging biomarkers to other important oncogenes.

Dr. Evans is a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Association for Cancer Research, the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, and the World Molecular Imaging Society. He has been invited nationally and internationally to lecture about his research. Dr. Evans has published over 35 peer-reviewed articles, 10 abstracts, and is a co-inventor on 4 patents. Dr. Evans also is the principal investigator or co-investigator on six human trials focused on new strategies for imaging solid tumors. Dr. Evans was a scientific co-founder and previously served on the scientific advisory board of ORIC Pharmaceuticals, Inc.