Dr. Travis Nelson

Biography

Travis J. Nelson, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Genetics at the Jerry M. Wallace School of Osteopathic Medicine (CUSOM). Dr. Nelson holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and was a postdoctoral fellow in chemical biology and medicinal chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Following his postdoctoral training, Dr. Nelson briefly taught chemistry at the high school level with the Wake County Public School System before joining CUSOM in 2026.

Dr. Nelson’s research interests are focused translational medicine and drug discovery, particularly in the realms of epigenetics and protein-protein interactions. His doctoral work, under the mentorship of Dr. Cliff Stains, focused on re-engineering a small, artificial luciferase enzyme for use as a bioluminescent assay in biological and biomedical drug discovery applications, particularly in the context of protein aggregation which plays a role in neurodegenerative diseases. His postdoctoral research under the mentorship of Dr. Nate Hathaway, focused on the development of a new gene therapy platform, that modifies the epigenetic state of a gene of interest in gene-specific and dose-dependent way using a novel combination of a modified CRISPR enzyme and heterobifunctional small molecule, and application of that platform to establish its use in an anti-cancer context by increasing expression of an anti-tumor gene to induce apoptosis and cell cycle arrest.