A Professor Becomes the Mentor He Never Had

Professor Engda Hagos survived civil war in Ethiopia to become a renowned cancer researcher and mentor.

When Engda Hagos was an undergrad at a community college in Illinois, he routinely got A’s in chemistry, but didn’t much enjoy the subject. On the other hand, he loved biology — but was a lackluster student, with a C average. “One of my professors told me, biology may not be for you — why don’t you drop out?” remembers Hagos. But he’d survived worse than a bad GPA, including a civil war that tore apart his native Ethiopia, forcing him to flee to the United States, where he knew few people and could barely speak the language.

Hagos worked his way through college, persisting in molecular and cellular biology classes to eventually earn his PhD in the subject. He is now an associate professor of biology at Colgate and a distinguished cancer researcher who investigates the role of key proteins that seem to have the ability to turn on or off the growth of cancerous cells. He’s also become the supportive mentor he never had, training more than 160 students in his lab and frequently extending joint authorship to students on papers. “I will take any students regardless of their grade, regardless of their background,” he says. “My only requirement is that they are interested in the subject and committed to what they do.”

From Ethiopia to Illinois

Hagos grew up in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, in the north of the country, where he had a happy life hiking and playing soccer. That changed in the late 1980s, when he was in 10th grade and a rebel insurgency broke out in the region. The government tried to enlist him into the military along with other local young men, and for his own protection, Hagos’ father sent him south to live with his brother. After he finished high school, his life again was in danger when the government began torturing and killing people from Tigray — including his brother, who was incarcerated for three years. Hagos fled, taking a harrowing trip with a friend toward the border with Kenya, evading both government soldiers and wild animals.

Hagos finally made it to the border, where he was transferred to a refugee camp, living there for more than a year. “At the beginning, people were eating, but then the government started losing and many people were fleeing the country,” he says. “We could only eat once a day — it was very challenging.” In September 1991, a relative in Washington, D.C., sponsored him to come to the United States, and Hagos worked 70-hour weeks as a store clerk and a parking attendant while he took English language classes. Eventually, a friend who was attending school in Illinois invited Hagos to come live with him and take classes together.

Hagos was only able to get into community college, struggling with the  language and the culture shock of suddenly being in a smaller Midwestern community. He worked almost full time in a gas station while also taking classes. “I would get up and go to school, then start work at 4 and stay there until 10, then go to the library until 2,” he says. “Sometimes I ask myself, ‘How did I do that?’” Eventually he transferred to the University of Illinois, where he fell in love with biology despite his struggles in the subject. “I think cells are fascinating,” he says, “how they become so specialized, and how they communicate with each other.” 

Earning a master’s at Northeastern Illinois University and a doctorate at the University of Georgia, he focused on embryo development, examining the processes by which cells divide and differentiate to create the multiplicity of cells in the body. From there, it was a logical move to study the growth of cancer cells instead. “Embryo cells are communicating with each other to create all these specialized cells for the organism to function and survive,” he says. “Cancer cells are miscommunicating with each other, and dividing uncontrollably, killing the very person who gave birth to it.”

The Mysteries of Cancer

Hagos’ research began focusing on Krüppel-like factor 4 (Klf4), a kind of protein called a transcription factor that has the ability to switch genes on or off. After a stint as a postdoctoral researcher at Emory University, he came to Colgate in 2010. Three years later, he co-published a paper showing that, when Klf4 is lacking in cells, its genetic material can become damaged, with breaks in DNA strands and chromosome abnormalities — factors that could lead to the development of cancer. 

“The big question is ‘Why?’” says Hagos, who has spent the past decade further homing in on the mechanism behind this damage. In 2015 he wrote another paper (with the help of Colgate student Changchang Liu ’15) showing that the lack of Klf4 seems to suppress activation of antioxidant genes in the cell. That, in return, causes the overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS), oxygen molecules that careen around the cell causing damage. At the same time, lack of Klf4 also seems to inhibit the machinery of the cell that recycles old proteins, leading them to pile up and wreak further havoc to destabilize the cell.

More recently, in 2020, Hagos published new research with 10 students that further explored these issues, locating problems in the mitochondria — the energy powerhouse of the cell — leading to ROS production and lack of recycling within that vital cell machinery as well. All of these studies have increasingly pointed to the potential role of Klf4 as a tumor suppressant, which could help prevent damage to cells that leads to cancer. “In the long run, if we understand how these processes are affected, we could potentially design a drug to correct these kinds of mistakes,” Hagos says. “If there is a way to deliver this drug to a specific area of a cell, then we could do some correction to stop this damage from happening.”

In all of this research, Hagos has worked closely with students, helping them develop confidence, become proficient in the lab, and contribute in meaningful ways. “What I’m offering to my students is what I didn’t get myself,” he says. When students spend hours on an experiment that doesn’t work, Hagos helps them pick up the pieces, figure out what went wrong, and learn to do it better the next time. “As humans, we are afraid of failure, but failure is just as important as success,” he says. “Science is not easy, but this is how it’s done.”

Reflections

Even as Hagos has left Ethiopia behind for his success in the United States, the country’s legacy has continued to affect him and his family. His wife, who is also Ethiopian, ran into problems with her visa and had to leave the U.S. to return to Ethiopia due to a change in immigration policy in 2018. Hagos took a sabbatical from Colgate during the 2018–19 school year and joined her there with their two children, teaching biology to PhD students while there. When he returned to the U.S. with the children in 2021, however, his wife had to stay behind, and she contracted COVID-19. Due to complications in the hospital in Ethiopia — which still remain unclear — she fell into a coma and developed brain damage. 

Eventually, Hagos was able to transport his wife back to the U.S. on humanitarian parole. She is now conscious and slowly improving, able to eat solid food, and even laughing at television shows, though she is still unable to communicate with words. Hagos remains hopeful for her recovery, staying upbeat despite the challenges his family is facing. “Last year, I couldn’t hear her voice, and four months ago she was in the hospital. Now she is laughing.” 

Hagos reflects on the events of his lifetime, including the distance he has come from his own troubled past, and chooses to focus on the impact he can have on others. “I think because of my childhood trauma and my struggles in the U.S., I look at everything in life as relative,” he says. “I am fortunate to be where I am now, and being a professor can be extremely influential if you use it right. For me, the most satisfactory thing in life is giving service.”