CONQUERING KRAS IN PANCREATIC CANCER
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the most common form of pancreatic cancer and the third leading cause of cancer deaths in the US. Most patients diagnosed with PDAC die from their disease within one year of diagnosis. With a five-year survival rate of approximately 10%, pancreatic cancer is an aggressive and treatment-refractory disease with few effective treatment options.
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the most common form of pancreatic cancer and the third leading cause of cancer deaths in the US. Most patients diagnosed with PDAC die from their disease within one year of diagnosis. With a five-year survival rate of approximately 10%, pancreatic cancer is an aggressive and treatment-refractory disease with few effective treatment options.
PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS
The Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer project will be supported in partnership with the Lustgarten Foundation. Lustgarten is the largest private funder of pancreatic cancer researchers. Lustgarten has a singular mission: transforming pancreatic cancer into a curable disease. Read More
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- The KRAS gene, which is altered in more than 90% of pancreas cancers, has long been believed to be undruggable.
- With many promising new KRAS-targeting therapies either now available or on the horizon, the field may be on the cusp of a revolution in treatment for patients with pancreatic cancer.
- The Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer team will integrate clinical and laboratory approaches to understand why patients do or do not respond to the new therapies using breakthrough single-cell technologies to deeply investigate biology in organoids, mice, and humans.
- The team will develop pharmaceutical partnerships to accelerate the translation of new KRAS inhibitors into effective drugs for this disease. The large number of patients at Break Through Cancer partner institutions will enable trials that would be difficult at a single institution since some patients have rare but important KRAS mutations.
- The Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer project will be supported in partnership with the Lustgarten Foundation.
MEET THE TEAM
Alex K. Shalek, PhD
Alexandra Bird, BS
Andrew Aguirre, MD, PhD
Anirban Maitra, MBBS
Anupriya Singhal, MD, PhD
Douglas Lauffenburger, PhD
Eileen M. O’Reilly, MD
Elana Fertig, PhD
Elias-Ramzey Karnoub, BA
Jianzhu Chen
Joseph D. Mancias, MD, PhD
Julien Dilly, MS
Kate McAndrews, PhD
Kevin Kapner, MS
Kevin Soares, MD
Kimal Rajapakshe, PhD
Linghua Wang, MD, PhD
Luciane T. Kagohara, PhD
Matt Vander Heiden, MD, PhD
Neal Rosen, MD, PhD
Nilofer Azad, MD
Pamela Constantinou Papadopoulos, PhD
Paola A. Guerrero, PhD
Raghu Kalluri, MD, PhD
Riccardo Mezzadra, PhD
Robert A Anders, MD, PhD
Ronald A. DePinho, MD
Scott W. Lowe, PhD
Shubham Pant, MD
Siri Palreddy
Stephanie Dougan, PhD
Sujan Piya, PhD
Tobiloba Oni, PhD
Tuomas Tammela, MD, PhD
Wungki Park, MD
Ziyue Li, PhD
Alex K. Shalek, PhD
MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
TeamLab(s): Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies, Eradicating Minimal Residual Disease in AML<, Targeting Clonal Hematopoiesis to Prevent AML, The Data Science Hub
Alex K. Shalek, PhD (pronouns: he/him/his) is the Director of the Institute for Medical Engineering & Science (IMES), the Director of the Health Innovation Hub at MIT, and the J. W. Kieckhefer Professor in IMES and the Department of Chemistry at MIT, as well as an Extramural Member of its Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. He is also an Institute Member of the Broad Institute, a Member of the Ragon Institute, an Assistant in Immunology at MGB, and an Instructor in Health Sciences & Technology at HMS. Dr. Shalek received his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Columbia University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in chemical physics under the guidance of Hongkun Park, and performed postdoctoral training under Hongkun Park and Aviv Regev (Broad/MIT). His lab’s research is directed towards the development and application of new approaches to elucidate cellular and molecular features that inform tissue-level function and dysfunction across the spectrum of human health and disease. Dr. Shalek and his work have received numerous honors including a NIH New Innovator Award, a Beckman Young Investigator Award, a Searle Scholar Award, a Pew-Stewart Scholar Award, the Avant-Garde (DP1 Pioneer) Award from the National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA), and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry, as well as the 2019-2020 Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award at MIT and the 2020 HMS Young Mentor Award.
Alexandra Bird, BS
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Alexandra Bird received her Bachelor of Science in Biology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. She began her career at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 2019 within the gastrointestinal cancer center trials team. As a clinical research manager, she handles the development, submission, conduct and close-out of investigator lead clinical trials at outside hospitals to ensure compliance with federal and local regulations and policies.
Andrew Aguirre, MD, PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Andrew Aguirre, MD, PhD, is a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Member at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Dr. Aguirre leads a basic and translational cancer research laboratory that studies pancreatic cancer biology and RAS signaling with the goal of developing new therapeutic strategies for patients.
Anirban Maitra, MBBS
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab(s): Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies
Dr. Maitra is a Professor of Translational Molecular Pathology and Scientific Director of the Sheikh Ahmed Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. The arc of his career over the past two decades has been defined by studying the genetics and biology of pancreatic cancer and its precursor lesions, with a particular focus on early detection and cancer interception.He is deeply committed to improving the lives of patients afflicted with this devastating disease. He is a strong believer in the power team science and mentoring.
Anupriya Singhal, MD, PhD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Anu Singhal is a second year clinical fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and is a post-doc in the lab of Tuomas Tammela. She is studying how KRAS inhibition alters the composition of pancreatic cancer cell states within GEMM models. Her goal to is to understand mechanisms of adaptive resistance to KRAS inhibition and how targeting of pre-treatment cell states can prevent resistance from forming.
Douglas Lauffenburger, PhD
MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Douglas Lauffenburger is a Ford Professor of Bioengineering in the Departments of Biological Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Biology at MIT. He was the founding Head of the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT, and served in that capacity 1998-2019. The Lauffenburger research program centers on systems biology approaches to cell-cell communication and cell signaling in pathophysiology, emphasizing translational application to therapeutics discovery and development in cancer, pathogen infection, and inflammatory disease. Lauffenburger has co-authored the monograph Receptors: Models for Binding, Trafficking & Signaling (Oxford Press, 1993) and co-edited the book Systems Biomedicine: Concepts and Perspectives (Elsevier Press, 2010). More than 130 doctoral students and postdoctoral associates have undertaken research education under his supervision. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and a fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science and the American Scientific Affiliation. Lauffenburger has served as President of the Biomedical Engineering Society, Chair of the College of Fellows of American Institute for Medical & Biological Engineering, on the Advisory Council for the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and as a co-author of the 2009 National Research Council report A New Biology for the 21st Century.
Eileen M. O’Reilly, MD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies
Dr. Eileen M. O’Reilly holds the Winthrop Rockefeller Endowed Chair in Medical Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK). She serves as the Section Head for Hepatopancreaticobiliary/ Neuroendocrine Cancers, Gastrointestinal Oncology Service, Co-Director for Medical Initiatives at the David M. Rubenstein Center for Pancreatic Cancer and is an Attending Physician and Member at MSK and Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. O’Reilly has pancreatic cancer as the major focus of her research and clinical activities. Research directions include integration of molecular and genetic-based therapies for pancreas cancer along with development of adjuvant and neoadjuvant therapies and identification of biomarkers for therapy selection. Dr. O’Reilly is the Principal Investigator of multiple phase I, II, III trials in pancreas cancer and is the Co-PI of the MSK Pancreas Cancer SPORE (Specialized Program of Oncology Research Excellence). Dr. O’Reilly’s is Chair of the Human Research Protection Program/IRB at MSK. She serves as the Co-Chair of the NCI Alliance Co-Operative Group Gastrointestinal Cancers Committee and is a member of the NCI Gastrointestinal Cancers Steering Committee (GISC), Medical and Scientific Advisory Board of Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Guidelines Committee and the Board of the National Pancreas Foundation.
Elana Fertig, PhD
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
TeamLab(s): The Data Science Hub, Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies
Dr. Fertig directs a hybrid computational and experimental lab in the systems biology of cancer and therapeutic response to develop a new predictive medicine paradigm in cancer. Her wet lab develops time course models of therapeutic resistance and performs single cell technology development. Her computational methods blend mathematical modeling and artificial intelligence to determine the biomarkers and molecular mechanisms of therapeutic resistance from multi-platform genomics data. These techniques have broad applicability to the analysis of clinical biospecimens, developmental biology, and neuroscience. Dr. Fertig is a Professor of Oncology and Director of the Division / Associate Cancer Center Director in Quantitative Sciences, co-Director of the Convergence Institute, and co-Director of the Single-Cell Training and Analysis Center. She has secondary appointments in Biomedical Engineering and Applied Mathematics and Statistics, affiliations in the Institute of Computational Medicine, Center for Computational Genomics, Machine Learning, Mathematical Institute for Data Science, and the Center for Computational Biology and is a Daniel Nathans Scientific Innovator. Prior to entering the field of computational cancer biology, Dr Fertig was a NASA research fellow in numerical weather prediction.
Elias-Ramzey Karnoub, BA
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab:Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Elias-Ramzey Karnoub joined the Christine Iacobuzio-Donahue Lab and Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research at Memorial Sloan Kettering in May 2021 after graduating from Rutgers University-New Brunswick where he majored in Biomathematics and Statistics. During his time as an undergraduate, he spent time working both in wet and dry labs to understand cancer hotspots and regulatory networks. Since joining MSKCC, he has been working with multiple types of sequencing technologies and their applications in pancreatic cancer. In particular, he contributes to various trials and research projects through processing and analyzing patient samples for single cell RNA sequencing as well as single cell DNA sequencing.
Jianzhu Chen
MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
TeamLab(s): Intercepting Ovarian Cancer, Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Jianzhu Chen is Professor of Biology at Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Department of Biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Chen received a Ph.D. degree in genetics from Stanford University. He was a postdoctoral fellow and then an instructor at Harvard Medical School before he joined the faculty at MIT. Dr. Chen’s research seeks fundamental understanding of the immune system as well as its application in disease intervention. Over the years, Dr. Chen has made significant contributions to a broad area of research in immunology, cancer research, infectious diseases, and animal models of human diseases. Recently, Dr. Chen’s research has focused on development of tumor-specific CAR-NK cells and re-programming macrophages for disease intervention, including cancer, metabolic diseases and infectious diseases.
Joseph D. Mancias, MD, PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Dr. Mancias is a Radiation Oncology physician-scientist who runs a laboratory studying critical aspects of pancreatic cancer biology and maintains a focused clinical practice caring for patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Dr. Mancias graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry from Princeton University in 2000 where he worked in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Hecht on protein folding. As part of the Tri-Institutional Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan-Kettering MD-PhD Program, he earned a PhD degree from the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences in 2007 and his M.D. from Weill Cornell Medical College in 2008. His graduate work in the laboratory of Jonathan Goldberg at the Sloan-Kettering Institute identified molecular mechanisms of cargo export from the endoplasmic reticulum using x-ray crystallography. His internship in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital was followed by a residency in Radiation Oncology in the combined Harvard Radiation Oncology Program completed in 2013. His postdoctoral research in the laboratories of Dr. Wade Harper in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School and Dr. Alec Kimmelman in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute from 2011-2016 focused on the role of autophagy in pancreatic cancer biology. In 2016, Dr. Mancias began his independent research and clinical program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute / Brigham and Women’s Hospital and as an investigator within the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Hale Family Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research. His research program studies the role of autophagy and therapeutic resistance in pancreatic cancer using a combination of genetic, quantitative proteomic, cell biological, and mouse modeling approaches. In particular, Dr. Mancias has developed an integrated quantitative temporal proteomics and metabolomics platform for discovery of therapeutic resistance and is using it to identify mechanisms of resistance to novel oncogenic KRAS inhibitors.
Julien Dilly, MS
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Julien is a research technician in the Aguirre lab at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Starting in the summer, Julien will be starting his PhD in Biological and Biomedical Sciences at Harvard University. His research is focused on leveraging multi-omics approaches as well as patient specimens to predict biomarkers of response and resistance to KRAS targeted therapies in pancreatic cancer.
Kate McAndrews, PhD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Kate received her BS from University of Nevada Reno in Chemical Engineering and her PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Kalluri laboratory at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Her research is focused on understanding the functional role of fibroblasts in pancreatic cancer progression and therapy resistance.
Kevin Kapner, MS
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
TeamLab:Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Kevin studied Biochemistry and Mathematics at Tufts University, where he also earned his master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering. In the Aguirre Lab, he is involved with the creation and development of analysis strategies for bulk and single cell RNA-sequencing data, CRISPR screen data, chemical compound testing, and genomic data. He also helps organize and develop in-lab computational methods and software tools to complement experimental efforts. In the future, he hopes to pursue a PhD in biostatistics or computational biology.
Kevin Soares, MD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab(s): Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies
Kevin C. Soares MD is a physician-scientist, hepatopancreatobiliary surgical oncologist and Assistant Attending Surgeon at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Assistant Professor of Surgery at Weill Cornell Medical School. He attended the University of Massachusetts Medical School and completed general surgery residency at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He then completed a dual fellowship in hepatopancreaticobiliary surgery as well as complex general surgical oncology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. His clinical practice focuses on diseases of the liver, pancreas, bile duct and gallbladder and implementing minimally invasive techniques in the management of these pathologies. Dr. Soares’s research focuses on combinatorial cancer immunotherapies in pancreas, liver, and bile duct cancers in order to better understand mechanisms abrogating responses to cancer immunotherapy in hepatobiliary malignancies.
Kimal Rajapakshe, PhD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab:Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies, The Data Science Hub
Kimal Rajapakshe is a Computational Scientist at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center with a decade of experience in analyzing and integration of multi-omics data from both solid tumor and liquid biopsy. He specialized in analyzing RNA-Seq(bulk and single cell), ATAC-Seq(bulk and single cell), genomic sequencing(WES & targeted), ChIP-Seq, Methylation array, proteomics and metabolomics data.
Linghua Wang, MD, PhD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLabs: Intercepting Ovarian Cancer , Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, and The Data Science Hub
Dr. Wang is currently a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Genomic Medicine at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Wang received her MD in Medicine and her PhD in Cancer Genomics and completed her postdoctoral training at Human Genome Sequencing Center, Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, at Baylor College of Medicine. She was recruited to MD Anderson in 2017 and set up the Computational Biology Laboratory. Dr. Wang has significant expertise in computational biology, cancer immunogenomics, single-cell and spatial multiomics. Over the past few years, she has built a leading research program in cancer immunogenomics at MD Anderson and developed a collaborative, team-based approach to tackle cancer research. Her group has a vast experience in unraveling the heterogeneity and evolution of the complex tumor-immune ecosystems using the cutting-edge single-cell and spatial sequencing technologies, coupled with the state-of-the-art computation and modeling. Dr. Wang is the principal investigator of the CPRIT Individual Investigator Research Award and she serves as a co-Investigator for several peer-reviewed grants from NIH/NCI and U.S. Department of Defense. Dr. Wang is also the recipient of the Sabin Fellow Award, two SPORE Career Enhancement Program Awards and three Institutional Research Grant Awards. She serves as the Bioinformatics Lead and project co-Leader for two MD Anderson Cancer Moon Shot Projects and she also leads/co-leads several additional single-cell studies. When she was at Baylor, Dr. Wang also contributed significantly to the NHGRI rare cancer projects, the NCI Exceptional Responder Initiative, TCGA and pan-cancer projects. Dr. Wang is a productive investigator and she has published 32 first- or senior-authored papers over the past few years. Among them, 23 were published in the top-tier or other high-impact journals. As site Lead of Data Science for the pancreatic and ovarian cancer programs funded by Break Through Cancer, Dr. Wang is extremely enthusiastic to collaborate with world-renowned leaders, talented data scientists, and the multidisciplinary research teams across five participating institutions to develop effective data science strategies to better understand, detect, and treat the most lethal cancers.
Luciane T. Kagohara, PhD
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
TeamLab(s): Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies, Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, The Data Science Hub
Dr. Luciane Kagohara is a molecular and computational biologist hybrid. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences from Universidade Estadual Paulista (Botucatu, Brazil) and her Ph.D. from the A.C. Camargo Cancer Center (Sao Paulo, Brazil) at the Department of Pathology. Earlier in her carrier, she focused on the identification of epigenetic and genetic cancer biomarkers. During her postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, she pursued training in bioinformatics and developed the expertise to perform combined experimental and computational research on epigenetic regulation of gene expression in acquired resistance. As a molecular biologist, she has extensive experience in experimental molecular biology and aptitude to design, optimize and execute a wide range of approaches, including single-cell, spatial transcriptomics, ATAC-seq, RNA-seq, among other molecular biology techniques. As a computational biologist, Dr. Kagohara can perform integrated analysis of genetic and epigenetic high-throughput data generated with different platforms. Her unique background is suitable for her research program which applies state-of-the-art technologies, like single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, to investigate mechanisms of resistance to different immuno-, chemo- and targeted therapies. Using single-cell and spatial technologies experimental and computational approaches to study clinical trial samples, Dr. Kagohara expects to discover molecular mechanisms and cellular interaction components of therapeutic resistance in cancers.
Matt Vander Heiden, MD, PhD
MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
TeamLab:Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Matt Vander Heiden is the Director of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and is the Lester Wolfe (1919) Professor of Molecular Biology at MIT. He is also a practicing medical oncologist and an Instructor of Medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He received his MD and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago, prior to completing clinical training and a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School. His laboratory is interested in understand how metabolism influences cancer.
Neal Rosen, MD, PhD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Dr. Rosen trained as a physician-scientist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in the laboratory of Dr. Ora Rosen, where he began his lifelong interest in intracellular signaling and the perturbation of the normal signaling network by oncoproteins. He has been studying this subject for the past 30 years where and has played a role in understanding the consequences of mutations that activated the RAS/RAF/MEK/ERK and PI3K/AKT/MTOR pathway and developing inhibitors thereof, several of which (RAF, MEK, PI3K, mTOR) are now approved for treatment of specific metastatic tumors.
Nilofer Azad, MD
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Dr. Azad is a Professor of Oncology at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins (SKCCC), where she serves as Co-director of the Developmental Therapeutics Clinical Research Program and the Cancer Genetic and Epigenetic Core Research Program. After completing her fellowship in Medical Oncology at the National Cancer Institute, she joined the SKCCC faculty and has led multiple national and international clinical trials of novel drugs for cancer patients. Dr. Azad is dedicated to translational research in drug development that will form the foundation of future clinical trials. Her work is focused on combining targeted and epigenetic therapies with other classes of agents. These preclinical studies are designed to move directly into early phase clinical trials, with strong laboratory correlates that will be used to further hone the therapeutic regimens, as a quintessential example of bench-to-bedside medicine.
Pamela Constantinou Papadopoulos, PhD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies
Dr. Pamela Papadopoulos is an Associate Director, Research Planning and Development in the Sheikh Ahmed Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research and the Moon Shots Program at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Dr. Papadopoulos received her B.A. in Chemistry from Vassar College and Ph.D. in Chemistry from New York University. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in Bioengineering and was an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of BioSciences at Rice University. At MD Anderson, Dr. Papadopoulos is involved in several large, programmatic grants and initiatives. She applies her scientific background to provide scientific and administrative oversight to multi-PI and multidisciplinary programs.
Paola A. Guerrero, PhD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies
Dr. Guerrero is Research Group Leader at the Pancreatic Cancer Research Center at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She leads a liquid biopsy research/genomics group under the guidance of Dr. Anirban Maitra. She has a PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics from Texas A&M University and postdoctoral training from Baylor College of Medicine and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Her lab conducts innovative translational research on patient-derived models and biospecimens to study cell intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms of PDAC tumorigenesis. Some of her current work focuses on using limited biopsies from human primary and metastatic PDAC paired to scRNAseq. Her lab demonstrated that these specimens were able to capture all previously reported repertoire of cell types in surgical resections, including the tumor-stromal heterogeneity inherent to this disease, and revealed putative mechanisms for immune evasion within the tumor microenvironment. Her lab is also evaluating the prognostic and predictive role of cargo coding-RNA from extracellular vesicles in patients with colorectal cancer, with the idea of expanding these studies to other cancer types such as PDAC.
Raghu Kalluri, MD, PhD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Raghu Kalluri was born in St. Louis, Missouri and received his B.S. in Chemistry and Genetics. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Kansas Medical Center and his M.D. degree from Brown University Medical School. Dr. Kalluri conducted his fellowship training at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and performed research in areas of tissue injury/repair and regeneration. From 1997 to 2012, Dr. Kalluri was a faculty Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and from 2006 served as a tenured Professor and the Chief of the Division of Matrix Biology with appointments in Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at HMS, Harvard MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and as a research fellow of the HMS Peabody Society. Since 2012, Dr. Kalluri serves as a Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cancer Biology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Kalluri currently holds the Frederick F. Becker Distinguished University Chair of Cancer Research. Dr. Kalluri’s research has led to seminal discoveries in the area of tissue injury/regeneration, exosomes biology, cancer biology, and cancer metastasis. He is the recipient of several mentorship, teaching and research excellence awards, and a fellow of American Society of Clinical Investigation, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and UT Ken Shine Education Academy. Dr. Kalluri has published over 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts. Dr. Kalluri has an h-index of 125 with over 95,811 lifetime citations and Dr. Kalluri is ranked in the 0.0068% (ranked 440) of about 6.8 million scientists (covering 22 scientific fields) in the world for citation impact. Dr. Kalluri has trained 121 postdoctoral fellows, 21 graduate students, and 73 undergraduate students. Dr. Kalluri serves on science and health advisory panels in the USA and European Union, and on the editorial boards of several academic journals representing biology and medicine and serves as the Deputy Editor of Cancer Research. Dr. Kalluri’s research has resulted in several issued patents, serves as an advisor to several biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, and is a scientific founder of five biotechnology companies.
Riccardo Mezzadra, PhD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Riccardo Mezzadra performed his graduate work in the laboratory of Ton Schumacher in the Netherlands where he employed genetic screens to dissect some aspects of the molecular interplay between T cells and cancer cells. For his postdoctoral training he joined the laboratory of Scott Lowe, where he is currently affiliated, in order to study the interplay between cancer-cell intrinsic and cancer-cell extrinsic tumor suppression. He is involved in the project “Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer” for studying how inhibition of RAS signaling can favor an antitumoral immune response.
:https://twitter.com/r_mezzadra
Robert A Anders, MD, PhD
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Dr. Robert A. Anders earned his medical and Molecular Biology graduate degrees at Mayo Medical and Graduate School. He completed his Anatomic and Clinical Pathology residence, fellowship in Gastrointestinal and Liver Pathology, post-doctoral training in Immunology and Instructor of Pathology at the University of Chicago. He joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 2005 as an Assistant Professor in Division of Gastrointestinal and Liver Pathology and now is an Associate Professor of Pathology. He also serves as co-director of the Tumor Microenvironment Laboratory in the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Immune Cancer Therapy.
In addition to his duties as a practicing GI/Liver surgical pathologist, Dr. Anders runs an independently funded research lab that focuses on tumor immunology. His interest in Immunology developed while he studied liver immunology and regeneration while at the University of Chicago and the early years of this position at Johns Hopkins. His current interests are in tumor immunology and specifically interrogating the immune microenvironment in tumor tissue. He first began examining human tissue for the expression of PD-1 / PD-L1 in 2006, at the encouragement of his K08 mentor Dr. Lieping Chen. He continues research in human and murine cancer immunology using single and multiple color immunostaining coupled to digital image analysis.
Ronald A. DePinho, MD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Ronald A. DePinho, MD is past president and distinguished university professor at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. His research program has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of cancer, aging and degenerative disorders, leading to clinical advances. In particular, Dr. DePinho’s research on pancreatic cancer has spanned two decades and resulted in 50 peer-reviewed papers describing his contributions to this field. Dr. DePinho is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Science, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association of the Advancement of Science, and the American Association of Cancer Research.
Scott W. Lowe, PhD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Scott W. Lowe is Chair of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program in the Sloan-Kettering Institute at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and an Investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Lowe received his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He initiated his independent research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where his group made important contributions to the understanding of tumor suppressor gene action and the consequences of their mutation. At MSKCC, his laboratory applies mouse models, genetics, and genomics in a coordinated effort to identify cancer drivers and dependencies, with a recent emphasis on understanding how the tumor ecosystem influences tumor progression and therapy response. These efforts have revealed fundamental insights into cancer mechanisms and identified new therapeutic strategies. Dr. Lowe’s work has been recognized by several awards, including a Sidney Kimmel Scholar Award, a Rita Allen Scholar Award, the American Association for Cancer Research, the G.H.A. Clowes Award, the Paul Marks Prize, the Alfred G. Knudsen Award, and recently was named a Fellow in the American Association for Cancer Research Academy. He has also been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine.
Shubham Pant, MD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Dr. Shubham Pant, MD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology with a joint appointment in the Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics at the The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Pant is a key opinion leader in the fields of Phase 1 (Early drug development) and pancreatic cancer. He has an expertise in targeted therapy and immunotherapy, and has co-authored numerous peer-review articles and is a Section Editor for the Handbook of Targeted Therapy and Immunotherapy. In addition, he has presented or has been coauthor on more than 100 abstracts in national and international meetings including ASCO, AACR. ESMO, ESMO GI, ASCO GI, and the NCI-EORTC-AACR (triple meeting). He is a collaborator on numerous grants including R01 grant from the National Institute of Health and serves as the Clinical Co-leader on NCI Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE). He also serves as a member of the National Cancer Institute Pancreas Task Force and helped draft the ASCO Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer Guidelines that provide evidence-based recommendations to serve as a guide for physicians. Dr. Pant has been the recipient of ASCO/AACR Workshop Methods in Clinical Cancer Research and was selected for the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Leadership Development Program. He currently serves as a member on the ASCO Annual Meeting Educational Committee (GI-Non Colorectal Track).
Siri Palreddy
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
TeamLabs: The Data Science Hub, Intercepting Ovarian Cancer,Revolutionizing GBM Drug Development Through Serial Biopsies, Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies
Siri Palreddy is a Clinical Research Coordinator for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and works across the Break Through Cancer TeamLabs. She recently graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College, holding a BA in Biology and English.
Stephanie Dougan, PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
TeamLab(s): Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies
Sujan Piya, PhD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Sujan Piya, PhD, is a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Translational Molecular Pathology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Piya earned his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Chosun University. His research focuses on leveraging next-generation sequencing (NGS) to uncover cellular and molecular mechanisms in cancer. With a strong record of impactful publications in peer-reviewed journals, Dr. Piya combines foundational scientific exploration with applied oncology research. He specializes in assay development, project management, and quality compliance, including the design and implementation of CLIA/CAP-compliant assays essential for advancing clinical trials.
Tobiloba Oni, PhD
MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Dr. Oni joined the Whitehead Institute as a Whitehead Fellow in 2021 and is an extramural member of the Koch Institute. The Oni lab focuses on delineating and targeting the critical interface between pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) cells and their microenvironment to improve patient outcomes. Dr. Oni seeks to inspire and mentor the next generation of scientists from diverse backgrounds, and build collaborative networks across disciplines to solve some of the most challenging biological questions.
Tuomas Tammela, MD, PhD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Dr. Tammela earned his MD and PhD from the University of Helsinki, Finland, where he worked in the laboratory of Professor Kari Alitalo, studying molecular mechanisms that control blood and lymphatic vessels growth. Dr. Tammela then moved to MIT for postdoctoral training with Professor Tyler Jacks. During this time, he became interested in cellular heterogeneity in cancer and identified cancer-derived niches as drivers of stem-like cells in lung cancer . Dr. Tammela joined the Sloan Kettering Institute as an Assistant Member in the Cancer Biology & Genetics Program in 2017. The Tammela Lab studies phenotypic heterogeneity of cancer cells within pancreas and lung tumors using genetically engineered mouse models, single cell approaches, tracing and ablation of distinct tumor cell lineages, CRISPR-mediated gene regulation, and advanced imaging techniques. The overarching goal of these efforts is to discover pathways that drive distinct cellular phenotypes and to develop new therapeutic concepts aimed at reducing cellular heterogeneity in tumors. Dr. Tammela holds scholarships from the American Cancer Society, the Josie Robertson Foundation, the Rita Allen Foundation and the V Foundation. He is a recipient of a Mark Foundation Emerging Leader Award, an NIH-NCI R37 MERIT Award, and an AACR Next Generation Transformative Research Award.
Wungki Park, MD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Dr. Park is a medical oncologist and physician-scientist who specializes in caring for people with cancers of the pancreas and bile system. At clinic, he works as a team member of clinical experts including surgeons, radiation oncologists, gastroenterologists, interventional radiologists, pathologists, radiologists, and nurses. In the lab at David M. Rubenstein Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research, he partners with cancer biologists, immunologists, and bioinformaticians to identify and develop better treatments for his patients through clinical trials. His research focuses on the resistance mechanisms to immunotherapy, tumor microenvironment, DNA damage repair, and KRAS.
Ziyue Li, PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
TeamLab:Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Ziyue Li, PhD is a postdoctoral research fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She received her PhD degree in 2017 at Sichuan University, China. She did postdoctoral fellowships at Babraham Institute, UK, and Boston Children’s Hospital prior to joining Andrew Aguirre’s lab at DFCI. She is interested in translational studies which can benefit human health, particularly utilizing high-throughput screen and genome editing to identify druggable targets, and to improve treatments for cancer patients. Outside of the lab, Ziyue enjoys traveling and spending time with her family.
MEET THE TEAM
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Alex K. Shalek, PhD
Alexandra Bird, BS
Andrew Aguirre, MD, PhD
Anirban Maitra, MBBS
Anupriya Singhal, MD, PhD
Douglas Lauffenburger, PhD
Eileen M. O’Reilly, MD
Elana Fertig, PhD
Elias-Ramzey Karnoub, BA
Jianzhu Chen
Joseph D. Mancias, MD, PhD
Julien Dilly, MS
Kate McAndrews, PhD
Kevin Kapner, MS
Kevin Soares, MD
Kimal Rajapakshe, PhD
Linghua Wang, MD, PhD
Luciane T. Kagohara, PhD
Matt Vander Heiden, MD, PhD
Neal Rosen, MD, PhD
Nilofer Azad, MD
Pamela Constantinou Papadopoulos, PhD
Paola A. Guerrero, PhD
Raghu Kalluri, MD, PhD
Riccardo Mezzadra, PhD
Robert A Anders, MD, PhD
Ronald A. DePinho, MD
Scott W. Lowe, PhD
Shubham Pant, MD
Siri Palreddy
Stephanie Dougan, PhD
Sujan Piya, PhD
Tobiloba Oni, PhD
Tuomas Tammela, MD, PhD
Wungki Park, MD
Ziyue Li, PhD
Alex K. Shalek, PhD
MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
TeamLab(s): Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies, Eradicating Minimal Residual Disease in AML<, Targeting Clonal Hematopoiesis to Prevent AML, The Data Science Hub
Alex K. Shalek, PhD (pronouns: he/him/his) is the Director of the Institute for Medical Engineering & Science (IMES), the Director of the Health Innovation Hub at MIT, and the J. W. Kieckhefer Professor in IMES and the Department of Chemistry at MIT, as well as an Extramural Member of its Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. He is also an Institute Member of the Broad Institute, a Member of the Ragon Institute, an Assistant in Immunology at MGB, and an Instructor in Health Sciences & Technology at HMS. Dr. Shalek received his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Columbia University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in chemical physics under the guidance of Hongkun Park, and performed postdoctoral training under Hongkun Park and Aviv Regev (Broad/MIT). His lab’s research is directed towards the development and application of new approaches to elucidate cellular and molecular features that inform tissue-level function and dysfunction across the spectrum of human health and disease. Dr. Shalek and his work have received numerous honors including a NIH New Innovator Award, a Beckman Young Investigator Award, a Searle Scholar Award, a Pew-Stewart Scholar Award, the Avant-Garde (DP1 Pioneer) Award from the National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA), and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry, as well as the 2019-2020 Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award at MIT and the 2020 HMS Young Mentor Award.
Alexandra Bird, BS
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Alexandra Bird received her Bachelor of Science in Biology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. She began her career at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 2019 within the gastrointestinal cancer center trials team. As a clinical research manager, she handles the development, submission, conduct and close-out of investigator lead clinical trials at outside hospitals to ensure compliance with federal and local regulations and policies.
Andrew Aguirre, MD, PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Andrew Aguirre, MD, PhD, is a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Member at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Dr. Aguirre leads a basic and translational cancer research laboratory that studies pancreatic cancer biology and RAS signaling with the goal of developing new therapeutic strategies for patients.
Anirban Maitra, MBBS
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab(s): Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies
Dr. Maitra is a Professor of Translational Molecular Pathology and Scientific Director of the Sheikh Ahmed Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. The arc of his career over the past two decades has been defined by studying the genetics and biology of pancreatic cancer and its precursor lesions, with a particular focus on early detection and cancer interception.He is deeply committed to improving the lives of patients afflicted with this devastating disease. He is a strong believer in the power team science and mentoring.
Anupriya Singhal, MD, PhD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Anu Singhal is a second year clinical fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and is a post-doc in the lab of Tuomas Tammela. She is studying how KRAS inhibition alters the composition of pancreatic cancer cell states within GEMM models. Her goal to is to understand mechanisms of adaptive resistance to KRAS inhibition and how targeting of pre-treatment cell states can prevent resistance from forming.
Douglas Lauffenburger, PhD
MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Douglas Lauffenburger is a Ford Professor of Bioengineering in the Departments of Biological Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Biology at MIT. He was the founding Head of the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT, and served in that capacity 1998-2019. The Lauffenburger research program centers on systems biology approaches to cell-cell communication and cell signaling in pathophysiology, emphasizing translational application to therapeutics discovery and development in cancer, pathogen infection, and inflammatory disease. Lauffenburger has co-authored the monograph Receptors: Models for Binding, Trafficking & Signaling (Oxford Press, 1993) and co-edited the book Systems Biomedicine: Concepts and Perspectives (Elsevier Press, 2010). More than 130 doctoral students and postdoctoral associates have undertaken research education under his supervision. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and a fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science and the American Scientific Affiliation. Lauffenburger has served as President of the Biomedical Engineering Society, Chair of the College of Fellows of American Institute for Medical & Biological Engineering, on the Advisory Council for the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and as a co-author of the 2009 National Research Council report A New Biology for the 21st Century.
Eileen M. O’Reilly, MD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies
Dr. Eileen M. O’Reilly holds the Winthrop Rockefeller Endowed Chair in Medical Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK). She serves as the Section Head for Hepatopancreaticobiliary/ Neuroendocrine Cancers, Gastrointestinal Oncology Service, Co-Director for Medical Initiatives at the David M. Rubenstein Center for Pancreatic Cancer and is an Attending Physician and Member at MSK and Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. O’Reilly has pancreatic cancer as the major focus of her research and clinical activities. Research directions include integration of molecular and genetic-based therapies for pancreas cancer along with development of adjuvant and neoadjuvant therapies and identification of biomarkers for therapy selection. Dr. O’Reilly is the Principal Investigator of multiple phase I, II, III trials in pancreas cancer and is the Co-PI of the MSK Pancreas Cancer SPORE (Specialized Program of Oncology Research Excellence). Dr. O’Reilly’s is Chair of the Human Research Protection Program/IRB at MSK. She serves as the Co-Chair of the NCI Alliance Co-Operative Group Gastrointestinal Cancers Committee and is a member of the NCI Gastrointestinal Cancers Steering Committee (GISC), Medical and Scientific Advisory Board of Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Guidelines Committee and the Board of the National Pancreas Foundation.
Elana Fertig, PhD
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
TeamLab(s): The Data Science Hub, Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies
Dr. Fertig directs a hybrid computational and experimental lab in the systems biology of cancer and therapeutic response to develop a new predictive medicine paradigm in cancer. Her wet lab develops time course models of therapeutic resistance and performs single cell technology development. Her computational methods blend mathematical modeling and artificial intelligence to determine the biomarkers and molecular mechanisms of therapeutic resistance from multi-platform genomics data. These techniques have broad applicability to the analysis of clinical biospecimens, developmental biology, and neuroscience. Dr. Fertig is a Professor of Oncology and Director of the Division / Associate Cancer Center Director in Quantitative Sciences, co-Director of the Convergence Institute, and co-Director of the Single-Cell Training and Analysis Center. She has secondary appointments in Biomedical Engineering and Applied Mathematics and Statistics, affiliations in the Institute of Computational Medicine, Center for Computational Genomics, Machine Learning, Mathematical Institute for Data Science, and the Center for Computational Biology and is a Daniel Nathans Scientific Innovator. Prior to entering the field of computational cancer biology, Dr Fertig was a NASA research fellow in numerical weather prediction.
Elias-Ramzey Karnoub, BA
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab:Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Elias-Ramzey Karnoub joined the Christine Iacobuzio-Donahue Lab and Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research at Memorial Sloan Kettering in May 2021 after graduating from Rutgers University-New Brunswick where he majored in Biomathematics and Statistics. During his time as an undergraduate, he spent time working both in wet and dry labs to understand cancer hotspots and regulatory networks. Since joining MSKCC, he has been working with multiple types of sequencing technologies and their applications in pancreatic cancer. In particular, he contributes to various trials and research projects through processing and analyzing patient samples for single cell RNA sequencing as well as single cell DNA sequencing.
Jianzhu Chen
MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
TeamLab(s): Intercepting Ovarian Cancer, Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Jianzhu Chen is Professor of Biology at Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Department of Biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Chen received a Ph.D. degree in genetics from Stanford University. He was a postdoctoral fellow and then an instructor at Harvard Medical School before he joined the faculty at MIT. Dr. Chen’s research seeks fundamental understanding of the immune system as well as its application in disease intervention. Over the years, Dr. Chen has made significant contributions to a broad area of research in immunology, cancer research, infectious diseases, and animal models of human diseases. Recently, Dr. Chen’s research has focused on development of tumor-specific CAR-NK cells and re-programming macrophages for disease intervention, including cancer, metabolic diseases and infectious diseases.
Joseph D. Mancias, MD, PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Dr. Mancias is a Radiation Oncology physician-scientist who runs a laboratory studying critical aspects of pancreatic cancer biology and maintains a focused clinical practice caring for patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Dr. Mancias graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry from Princeton University in 2000 where he worked in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Hecht on protein folding. As part of the Tri-Institutional Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan-Kettering MD-PhD Program, he earned a PhD degree from the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences in 2007 and his M.D. from Weill Cornell Medical College in 2008. His graduate work in the laboratory of Jonathan Goldberg at the Sloan-Kettering Institute identified molecular mechanisms of cargo export from the endoplasmic reticulum using x-ray crystallography. His internship in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital was followed by a residency in Radiation Oncology in the combined Harvard Radiation Oncology Program completed in 2013. His postdoctoral research in the laboratories of Dr. Wade Harper in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School and Dr. Alec Kimmelman in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute from 2011-2016 focused on the role of autophagy in pancreatic cancer biology. In 2016, Dr. Mancias began his independent research and clinical program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute / Brigham and Women’s Hospital and as an investigator within the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Hale Family Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research. His research program studies the role of autophagy and therapeutic resistance in pancreatic cancer using a combination of genetic, quantitative proteomic, cell biological, and mouse modeling approaches. In particular, Dr. Mancias has developed an integrated quantitative temporal proteomics and metabolomics platform for discovery of therapeutic resistance and is using it to identify mechanisms of resistance to novel oncogenic KRAS inhibitors.
Julien Dilly, MS
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Julien is a research technician in the Aguirre lab at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Starting in the summer, Julien will be starting his PhD in Biological and Biomedical Sciences at Harvard University. His research is focused on leveraging multi-omics approaches as well as patient specimens to predict biomarkers of response and resistance to KRAS targeted therapies in pancreatic cancer.
Kate McAndrews, PhD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Kate received her BS from University of Nevada Reno in Chemical Engineering and her PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Kalluri laboratory at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Her research is focused on understanding the functional role of fibroblasts in pancreatic cancer progression and therapy resistance.
Kevin Kapner, MS
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
TeamLab:Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Kevin studied Biochemistry and Mathematics at Tufts University, where he also earned his master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering. In the Aguirre Lab, he is involved with the creation and development of analysis strategies for bulk and single cell RNA-sequencing data, CRISPR screen data, chemical compound testing, and genomic data. He also helps organize and develop in-lab computational methods and software tools to complement experimental efforts. In the future, he hopes to pursue a PhD in biostatistics or computational biology.
Kevin Soares, MD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab(s): Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies
Kevin C. Soares MD is a physician-scientist, hepatopancreatobiliary surgical oncologist and Assistant Attending Surgeon at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Assistant Professor of Surgery at Weill Cornell Medical School. He attended the University of Massachusetts Medical School and completed general surgery residency at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He then completed a dual fellowship in hepatopancreaticobiliary surgery as well as complex general surgical oncology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. His clinical practice focuses on diseases of the liver, pancreas, bile duct and gallbladder and implementing minimally invasive techniques in the management of these pathologies. Dr. Soares’s research focuses on combinatorial cancer immunotherapies in pancreas, liver, and bile duct cancers in order to better understand mechanisms abrogating responses to cancer immunotherapy in hepatobiliary malignancies.
Kimal Rajapakshe, PhD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab:Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies, The Data Science Hub
Kimal Rajapakshe is a Computational Scientist at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center with a decade of experience in analyzing and integration of multi-omics data from both solid tumor and liquid biopsy. He specialized in analyzing RNA-Seq(bulk and single cell), ATAC-Seq(bulk and single cell), genomic sequencing(WES & targeted), ChIP-Seq, Methylation array, proteomics and metabolomics data.
Linghua Wang, MD, PhD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLabs: Intercepting Ovarian Cancer , Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, and The Data Science Hub
Dr. Wang is currently a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Genomic Medicine at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Wang received her MD in Medicine and her PhD in Cancer Genomics and completed her postdoctoral training at Human Genome Sequencing Center, Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, at Baylor College of Medicine. She was recruited to MD Anderson in 2017 and set up the Computational Biology Laboratory. Dr. Wang has significant expertise in computational biology, cancer immunogenomics, single-cell and spatial multiomics. Over the past few years, she has built a leading research program in cancer immunogenomics at MD Anderson and developed a collaborative, team-based approach to tackle cancer research. Her group has a vast experience in unraveling the heterogeneity and evolution of the complex tumor-immune ecosystems using the cutting-edge single-cell and spatial sequencing technologies, coupled with the state-of-the-art computation and modeling. Dr. Wang is the principal investigator of the CPRIT Individual Investigator Research Award and she serves as a co-Investigator for several peer-reviewed grants from NIH/NCI and U.S. Department of Defense. Dr. Wang is also the recipient of the Sabin Fellow Award, two SPORE Career Enhancement Program Awards and three Institutional Research Grant Awards. She serves as the Bioinformatics Lead and project co-Leader for two MD Anderson Cancer Moon Shot Projects and she also leads/co-leads several additional single-cell studies. When she was at Baylor, Dr. Wang also contributed significantly to the NHGRI rare cancer projects, the NCI Exceptional Responder Initiative, TCGA and pan-cancer projects. Dr. Wang is a productive investigator and she has published 32 first- or senior-authored papers over the past few years. Among them, 23 were published in the top-tier or other high-impact journals. As site Lead of Data Science for the pancreatic and ovarian cancer programs funded by Break Through Cancer, Dr. Wang is extremely enthusiastic to collaborate with world-renowned leaders, talented data scientists, and the multidisciplinary research teams across five participating institutions to develop effective data science strategies to better understand, detect, and treat the most lethal cancers.
Luciane T. Kagohara, PhD
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
TeamLab(s): Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies, Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, The Data Science Hub
Dr. Luciane Kagohara is a molecular and computational biologist hybrid. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences from Universidade Estadual Paulista (Botucatu, Brazil) and her Ph.D. from the A.C. Camargo Cancer Center (Sao Paulo, Brazil) at the Department of Pathology. Earlier in her carrier, she focused on the identification of epigenetic and genetic cancer biomarkers. During her postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, she pursued training in bioinformatics and developed the expertise to perform combined experimental and computational research on epigenetic regulation of gene expression in acquired resistance. As a molecular biologist, she has extensive experience in experimental molecular biology and aptitude to design, optimize and execute a wide range of approaches, including single-cell, spatial transcriptomics, ATAC-seq, RNA-seq, among other molecular biology techniques. As a computational biologist, Dr. Kagohara can perform integrated analysis of genetic and epigenetic high-throughput data generated with different platforms. Her unique background is suitable for her research program which applies state-of-the-art technologies, like single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, to investigate mechanisms of resistance to different immuno-, chemo- and targeted therapies. Using single-cell and spatial technologies experimental and computational approaches to study clinical trial samples, Dr. Kagohara expects to discover molecular mechanisms and cellular interaction components of therapeutic resistance in cancers.
Matt Vander Heiden, MD, PhD
MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
TeamLab:Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Matt Vander Heiden is the Director of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and is the Lester Wolfe (1919) Professor of Molecular Biology at MIT. He is also a practicing medical oncologist and an Instructor of Medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He received his MD and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago, prior to completing clinical training and a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School. His laboratory is interested in understand how metabolism influences cancer.
Neal Rosen, MD, PhD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Dr. Rosen trained as a physician-scientist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in the laboratory of Dr. Ora Rosen, where he began his lifelong interest in intracellular signaling and the perturbation of the normal signaling network by oncoproteins. He has been studying this subject for the past 30 years where and has played a role in understanding the consequences of mutations that activated the RAS/RAF/MEK/ERK and PI3K/AKT/MTOR pathway and developing inhibitors thereof, several of which (RAF, MEK, PI3K, mTOR) are now approved for treatment of specific metastatic tumors.
Nilofer Azad, MD
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Dr. Azad is a Professor of Oncology at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins (SKCCC), where she serves as Co-director of the Developmental Therapeutics Clinical Research Program and the Cancer Genetic and Epigenetic Core Research Program. After completing her fellowship in Medical Oncology at the National Cancer Institute, she joined the SKCCC faculty and has led multiple national and international clinical trials of novel drugs for cancer patients. Dr. Azad is dedicated to translational research in drug development that will form the foundation of future clinical trials. Her work is focused on combining targeted and epigenetic therapies with other classes of agents. These preclinical studies are designed to move directly into early phase clinical trials, with strong laboratory correlates that will be used to further hone the therapeutic regimens, as a quintessential example of bench-to-bedside medicine.
Pamela Constantinou Papadopoulos, PhD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies
Dr. Pamela Papadopoulos is an Associate Director, Research Planning and Development in the Sheikh Ahmed Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research and the Moon Shots Program at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Dr. Papadopoulos received her B.A. in Chemistry from Vassar College and Ph.D. in Chemistry from New York University. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in Bioengineering and was an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of BioSciences at Rice University. At MD Anderson, Dr. Papadopoulos is involved in several large, programmatic grants and initiatives. She applies her scientific background to provide scientific and administrative oversight to multi-PI and multidisciplinary programs.
Paola A. Guerrero, PhD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies
Dr. Guerrero is Research Group Leader at the Pancreatic Cancer Research Center at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She leads a liquid biopsy research/genomics group under the guidance of Dr. Anirban Maitra. She has a PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics from Texas A&M University and postdoctoral training from Baylor College of Medicine and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Her lab conducts innovative translational research on patient-derived models and biospecimens to study cell intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms of PDAC tumorigenesis. Some of her current work focuses on using limited biopsies from human primary and metastatic PDAC paired to scRNAseq. Her lab demonstrated that these specimens were able to capture all previously reported repertoire of cell types in surgical resections, including the tumor-stromal heterogeneity inherent to this disease, and revealed putative mechanisms for immune evasion within the tumor microenvironment. Her lab is also evaluating the prognostic and predictive role of cargo coding-RNA from extracellular vesicles in patients with colorectal cancer, with the idea of expanding these studies to other cancer types such as PDAC.
Raghu Kalluri, MD, PhD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Raghu Kalluri was born in St. Louis, Missouri and received his B.S. in Chemistry and Genetics. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Kansas Medical Center and his M.D. degree from Brown University Medical School. Dr. Kalluri conducted his fellowship training at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and performed research in areas of tissue injury/repair and regeneration. From 1997 to 2012, Dr. Kalluri was a faculty Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and from 2006 served as a tenured Professor and the Chief of the Division of Matrix Biology with appointments in Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at HMS, Harvard MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and as a research fellow of the HMS Peabody Society. Since 2012, Dr. Kalluri serves as a Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cancer Biology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Kalluri currently holds the Frederick F. Becker Distinguished University Chair of Cancer Research. Dr. Kalluri’s research has led to seminal discoveries in the area of tissue injury/regeneration, exosomes biology, cancer biology, and cancer metastasis. He is the recipient of several mentorship, teaching and research excellence awards, and a fellow of American Society of Clinical Investigation, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and UT Ken Shine Education Academy. Dr. Kalluri has published over 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts. Dr. Kalluri has an h-index of 125 with over 95,811 lifetime citations and Dr. Kalluri is ranked in the 0.0068% (ranked 440) of about 6.8 million scientists (covering 22 scientific fields) in the world for citation impact. Dr. Kalluri has trained 121 postdoctoral fellows, 21 graduate students, and 73 undergraduate students. Dr. Kalluri serves on science and health advisory panels in the USA and European Union, and on the editorial boards of several academic journals representing biology and medicine and serves as the Deputy Editor of Cancer Research. Dr. Kalluri’s research has resulted in several issued patents, serves as an advisor to several biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, and is a scientific founder of five biotechnology companies.
Riccardo Mezzadra, PhD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Riccardo Mezzadra performed his graduate work in the laboratory of Ton Schumacher in the Netherlands where he employed genetic screens to dissect some aspects of the molecular interplay between T cells and cancer cells. For his postdoctoral training he joined the laboratory of Scott Lowe, where he is currently affiliated, in order to study the interplay between cancer-cell intrinsic and cancer-cell extrinsic tumor suppression. He is involved in the project “Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer” for studying how inhibition of RAS signaling can favor an antitumoral immune response.
:https://twitter.com/r_mezzadra
Robert A Anders, MD, PhD
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Dr. Robert A. Anders earned his medical and Molecular Biology graduate degrees at Mayo Medical and Graduate School. He completed his Anatomic and Clinical Pathology residence, fellowship in Gastrointestinal and Liver Pathology, post-doctoral training in Immunology and Instructor of Pathology at the University of Chicago. He joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 2005 as an Assistant Professor in Division of Gastrointestinal and Liver Pathology and now is an Associate Professor of Pathology. He also serves as co-director of the Tumor Microenvironment Laboratory in the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Immune Cancer Therapy.
In addition to his duties as a practicing GI/Liver surgical pathologist, Dr. Anders runs an independently funded research lab that focuses on tumor immunology. His interest in Immunology developed while he studied liver immunology and regeneration while at the University of Chicago and the early years of this position at Johns Hopkins. His current interests are in tumor immunology and specifically interrogating the immune microenvironment in tumor tissue. He first began examining human tissue for the expression of PD-1 / PD-L1 in 2006, at the encouragement of his K08 mentor Dr. Lieping Chen. He continues research in human and murine cancer immunology using single and multiple color immunostaining coupled to digital image analysis.
Ronald A. DePinho, MD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Ronald A. DePinho, MD is past president and distinguished university professor at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. His research program has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of cancer, aging and degenerative disorders, leading to clinical advances. In particular, Dr. DePinho’s research on pancreatic cancer has spanned two decades and resulted in 50 peer-reviewed papers describing his contributions to this field. Dr. DePinho is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Science, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association of the Advancement of Science, and the American Association of Cancer Research.
Scott W. Lowe, PhD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Scott W. Lowe is Chair of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program in the Sloan-Kettering Institute at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and an Investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Lowe received his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He initiated his independent research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where his group made important contributions to the understanding of tumor suppressor gene action and the consequences of their mutation. At MSKCC, his laboratory applies mouse models, genetics, and genomics in a coordinated effort to identify cancer drivers and dependencies, with a recent emphasis on understanding how the tumor ecosystem influences tumor progression and therapy response. These efforts have revealed fundamental insights into cancer mechanisms and identified new therapeutic strategies. Dr. Lowe’s work has been recognized by several awards, including a Sidney Kimmel Scholar Award, a Rita Allen Scholar Award, the American Association for Cancer Research, the G.H.A. Clowes Award, the Paul Marks Prize, the Alfred G. Knudsen Award, and recently was named a Fellow in the American Association for Cancer Research Academy. He has also been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine.
Shubham Pant, MD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Dr. Shubham Pant, MD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology with a joint appointment in the Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics at the The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Pant is a key opinion leader in the fields of Phase 1 (Early drug development) and pancreatic cancer. He has an expertise in targeted therapy and immunotherapy, and has co-authored numerous peer-review articles and is a Section Editor for the Handbook of Targeted Therapy and Immunotherapy. In addition, he has presented or has been coauthor on more than 100 abstracts in national and international meetings including ASCO, AACR. ESMO, ESMO GI, ASCO GI, and the NCI-EORTC-AACR (triple meeting). He is a collaborator on numerous grants including R01 grant from the National Institute of Health and serves as the Clinical Co-leader on NCI Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE). He also serves as a member of the National Cancer Institute Pancreas Task Force and helped draft the ASCO Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer Guidelines that provide evidence-based recommendations to serve as a guide for physicians. Dr. Pant has been the recipient of ASCO/AACR Workshop Methods in Clinical Cancer Research and was selected for the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Leadership Development Program. He currently serves as a member on the ASCO Annual Meeting Educational Committee (GI-Non Colorectal Track).
Siri Palreddy
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
TeamLabs: The Data Science Hub, Intercepting Ovarian Cancer,Revolutionizing GBM Drug Development Through Serial Biopsies, Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies
Siri Palreddy is a Clinical Research Coordinator for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and works across the Break Through Cancer TeamLabs. She recently graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College, holding a BA in Biology and English.
Stephanie Dougan, PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
TeamLab(s): Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer, Demystifying Pancreatic Cancer Therapies
Sujan Piya, PhD
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Sujan Piya, PhD, is a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Translational Molecular Pathology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Piya earned his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Chosun University. His research focuses on leveraging next-generation sequencing (NGS) to uncover cellular and molecular mechanisms in cancer. With a strong record of impactful publications in peer-reviewed journals, Dr. Piya combines foundational scientific exploration with applied oncology research. He specializes in assay development, project management, and quality compliance, including the design and implementation of CLIA/CAP-compliant assays essential for advancing clinical trials.
Tobiloba Oni, PhD
MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Dr. Oni joined the Whitehead Institute as a Whitehead Fellow in 2021 and is an extramural member of the Koch Institute. The Oni lab focuses on delineating and targeting the critical interface between pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) cells and their microenvironment to improve patient outcomes. Dr. Oni seeks to inspire and mentor the next generation of scientists from diverse backgrounds, and build collaborative networks across disciplines to solve some of the most challenging biological questions.
Tuomas Tammela, MD, PhD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Dr. Tammela earned his MD and PhD from the University of Helsinki, Finland, where he worked in the laboratory of Professor Kari Alitalo, studying molecular mechanisms that control blood and lymphatic vessels growth. Dr. Tammela then moved to MIT for postdoctoral training with Professor Tyler Jacks. During this time, he became interested in cellular heterogeneity in cancer and identified cancer-derived niches as drivers of stem-like cells in lung cancer . Dr. Tammela joined the Sloan Kettering Institute as an Assistant Member in the Cancer Biology & Genetics Program in 2017. The Tammela Lab studies phenotypic heterogeneity of cancer cells within pancreas and lung tumors using genetically engineered mouse models, single cell approaches, tracing and ablation of distinct tumor cell lineages, CRISPR-mediated gene regulation, and advanced imaging techniques. The overarching goal of these efforts is to discover pathways that drive distinct cellular phenotypes and to develop new therapeutic concepts aimed at reducing cellular heterogeneity in tumors. Dr. Tammela holds scholarships from the American Cancer Society, the Josie Robertson Foundation, the Rita Allen Foundation and the V Foundation. He is a recipient of a Mark Foundation Emerging Leader Award, an NIH-NCI R37 MERIT Award, and an AACR Next Generation Transformative Research Award.
Wungki Park, MD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
TeamLab: Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Dr. Park is a medical oncologist and physician-scientist who specializes in caring for people with cancers of the pancreas and bile system. At clinic, he works as a team member of clinical experts including surgeons, radiation oncologists, gastroenterologists, interventional radiologists, pathologists, radiologists, and nurses. In the lab at David M. Rubenstein Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research, he partners with cancer biologists, immunologists, and bioinformaticians to identify and develop better treatments for his patients through clinical trials. His research focuses on the resistance mechanisms to immunotherapy, tumor microenvironment, DNA damage repair, and KRAS.
Ziyue Li, PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
TeamLab:Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Ziyue Li, PhD is a postdoctoral research fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She received her PhD degree in 2017 at Sichuan University, China. She did postdoctoral fellowships at Babraham Institute, UK, and Boston Children’s Hospital prior to joining Andrew Aguirre’s lab at DFCI. She is interested in translational studies which can benefit human health, particularly utilizing high-throughput screen and genome editing to identify druggable targets, and to improve treatments for cancer patients. Outside of the lab, Ziyue enjoys traveling and spending time with her family.
PROJECT SUMMARY
Like all cancers, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is caused by mutations in genes that collectively drive cells to divide and grow in the absence of the normal controls. In the case of PDAC, the key driver of disease development is a gene called KRAS. KRAS is analogous to a binary switch, with cancer-associated mutations preventing the switch from going to the OFF position, resulting in dysregulated growth.
Because many cells in the body need the normal KRAS switch to function, drugs that would indiscriminately switch KRAS off would be expected to be highly toxic. Recently however, the prospects for effectively targeting KRAS in PDAC and other diseases have improved with the development of drugs that act only on the mutant form of KRAS, and these have shown encouraging activity in clinical trials, with one drug in this class approved for the treatment of lung cancer. With many promising new KRAS-targeting therapies on the horizon, the field may be on the cusp of a revolution in the treatment of PDAC patients. There is an urgent need to act quickly and collaboratively to understand how to best implement KRAS inhibition to maximally benefit PDAC patients.
There are a number of challenges confronting this effort. First, as with most forms of “targeted therapies” in cancer, tumor cells eventually become resistant to KRAS inhibition alone. The key to success will therefore be to understand how resistance comes about, and how to use these new drugs in combination with other agents, analogous to combination therapies for other cancers and for HIV. Another challenge is that there are several distinct cancer-causing mutations in KRAS, so drug combinations may need to be tailored to each specific KRAS variant. This will require that clinical trials draw from a large pool of patients whose specific KRAS mutation status has been established.
The primary goal of the Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer project is to develop effective combination therapy strategies to target oncogenic KRAS in PDAC through rigorous preclinical studies and human clinical trials, backed by the extensive research and clinical infrastructure of five major cancer centers committed to advancing the care of PDAC patients.
The Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer team will bring together key thought leaders with expertise in KRAS function, PDAC biology, computational biology, single-cell analyses, patient-derived, and animal modeling and clinical trials to rapidly initiate rigorous preclinical and clinical studies, cooperatively evaluate data, and prioritize optimal therapeutic strategies.
The team will develop pharmaceutical partnerships to accelerate the translation of new KRAS inhibitors into effective drugs. Clinical trials with these new drugs will have the advantage of access to a large number of patients at the Break Through Cancer partner institutions.
Through these collective studies, this project aims to leverage new KRAS inhibitors to change the face of treatment for pancreatic cancer patients, ultimately improving the duration and quality of life for those diagnosed with this difficult disease.
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