Alex Kentsis
is a cancer biologist and pediatric oncologist.
Lauren Forbes
is a graduate student.
Lauren is a graduate student in the Sloan Kettering-Weill Cornell Pharmacology program. She received her B.S. and M.S. in Microbiology at the University of Rochester where her research was focused on antibiotic drug discovery. Her current research interests include cancer therapeutics and drug design.
Paolo Cifani
is a research fellow.
Paolo studied Biotechnology at Padua University in Italy and obtained his PhD from Lund University in Sweden, where he trained in high-resolution mass spectrometry proteomics. His research is mainly focused on applying innovative targeted approaches for functional quantitative proteomics to elucidate epigenetic drivers of cancer onset and progression. Towards this goal, he develops methods for improved mass spectrometric quantitation of peptides, and for the discovery of non-canonical protein isoforms and post-translational chemical modifications.
Zheng Ser
is a graduate student.
Zheng is a graduate student in the Tri-Institutional Program in Chemical Biology. He received his B.A. at Cornell University with a double major in Chemistry and Biology. His current research interests are focused on identifying aberrant protein-protein interactions in childhood cancers, with a focus on chromatin remodeling protein complexes, using cross-linking mass spectrometry proteomics. Zheng is a recipient of the NSS-PhD scholarship from A*STAR, Singapore.
Sumiko Takao
is a research fellow.
Sumiko received her MD and PhD from Kyoto University. She is interested in the biology and therapy of acute myeloid leukemia. Currently, she is modeling refractory childhood leukemias using genetically-engineered mouse models and developing methods for profiling and targeting leukemia stem cells.
Luz Jubierre Zapater
is a research fellow.
Luz received her B.S. in Biomedical Sciences and M.S. in Neurosciences from the University of Barcelona. She then completed her PhD at Vall d’Hebron Research Institute, where her research focused on the development of new epigenetic therapies for neuroblastoma. Her current research interests include the role of DNA transposition in solid tumors and the normal physiological function of domesticated transposases in brain development.
Isaac Krasnopolsky
is a research technician.
Isaac earned his B.A. in Chemistry from Yeshiva University. Prior to becoming a KRG operative, Isaac studied bacterial and viral genome replication. His current interests include bio-organic approaches to drug design and delivery.
Phillip Demarest
is a research technician.
Phillip received his B.S. in Integrative Neuroscience from SUNY Binghamton with a minor in Evolutionary Studies. He manages the KRG mouse house, and is interested in somatic genome rearrangements and genome engineering.
Ross Keller
is a research fellow.
Ross received his BA in Biology and Chemistry from St. Olaf College. He studied tumor evolution using mouse models of breast cancer for his PhD from Penn State College of Medicine. His current interests include elucidating the mechanisms by which aberrant transposase activities initiate and drive the evolution of childhood cancers.
Nicole McNeer
is a clinical fellow.
Nicole is a fellow in the pediatric hematology-oncology fellowship program at MSKCC and the New York-Presbyterian Hospital of the Weill Medical College of Cornell University. Prior to this, she completed her MD and PhD at the Yale School of Medicine, with a thesis focused on new nanoparticles and delivery mechanisms for genome editing. Currently, she is developing new delivery and cell penetration domains for cancer therapy using forward proteomic screens.
Danmeng Luo
is a research fellow.
Danmeng obtained her BS in Medicinal Chemistry from China Pharmaceutical University, and her PhD in Chemistry from University of Florida, where she studied with Hendrik Luesch on total synthesis and mechanisms of marine natural products. She is currently studying chemical proteomics and engineering of novel macromolecular delivery agents.
Masahiro Uni
is a research fellow.
Masahiro is a hematologist who received his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo, where his research focused on molecular biology of epigenetic regulation. His current research interests include defining the mechanisms of leukemogenic transcription factor control and identifying neomorphic gene products required for leukemia cell survival and targeted therapy.
Benjamin Herzberg
is a clinical fellow.
Ben is a fellow in the MSKCC Medical Oncology and Hematology program. Before coming to MSKCC, he received his MD from the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program and completed residency in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is interested in defining cancer cell growth and DNA damage repair signaling to discover new therapeutic targets.
Yaniv Kazansky
is a graduate student.
Yaniv is an MD-PhD student in the Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan Kettering MD-PhD program. He received his B.S. in Biochemistry and General Biology from the University of Maryland, College Park where his research focused on using biomolecular NMR to study the ubiquitin system. His current interests include characterizing oncogenic protein assemblies in childhood solid tumors and leukemias for the purpose of designing novel therapeutics.