1. Department of Oncological Sciences
Image of researchers in lab

Laboratories

The cutting-edge research we do within the Department of Oncological Sciences takes place in our diverse range of laboratories. Within these facilities, collaborative teams explore how cancers operate and determine how we can leverage that new knowledge to improve diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.

Meet the Chair

Aaronson Laboratory
The Aaronson laboratory is involved in cancer gene discovery and function, with the goal of identifying novel targets for therapy. Topics currently under investigation include growth factors and receptors, Wnt and Hippo developmental pathways deregulated in cancer, as well as the p53 tumor suppressor gene.

Arriaga Laboratory
The Arriaga Laboratory focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms of prostate cancer development and progression to metastasis. By understanding how these mechanisms confer particular vulnerabilities to metastatic tumors, the Arriaga Laboratory strives to develop novel treatment strategies that can improve patient care.

Bado Laboratory
Our laboratory seeks to understand the interplay between tumor microenvironment and metastasis plasticity in breast cancer. We use a multidisciplinary approach to investigate the mechanisms of intra-tumoral heterogeneity, stemness, and therapeutic resistance, with a particular emphasis on epigenetic dynamics during metastasis evolution.

Bernstein Laboratory
The Bernstein Laboratory studies histone variant proteins and their relation to cancer. The lab’s long-term goal is to understand the chromatin changes that take place at the molecular level during the transformation process of normal cells to cancer cells and during the reprogramming of somatic cells to stem cells. 

Bowcock Laboratory
The Bowcock lab investigates the genetic differences or spontaneous changes in genes that lead to disease, with the goal of understanding the genetic basis of disease and cancer.

Burakoff Laboratory
The Burakoff Laboratory studies cellular and molecular immunology, T-cell activation and signal transduction, and transplantation immunology.

Chipuk Laboratory
The Chipuk Laboratory deciphers the interplay between mitochondria and cell death signaling.

Chowell Laboratory
The Chowell Laboratory applies approaches from computational biology and machine learning to unravel the molecular determinants of response to immune checkpoint blockade therapy, in order to understand the co-evolution of tumor cells and the human immune system during cancer evolution, and to learn the complex rules that govern T-cell epitope recognition and immune escape.

Dominguez-Sola Laboratory
The Dominguez-Sola Laboratory is interested in understanding how cancer initiation shapes the biological features and natural history of this disease.

Ferrari de Andrade Laboratory
The Ferrari de Andrade Laboratory develops and dissects monoclonal antibodies that inhibit proteolytic cleavage of extracellular proteins.

Fisher Laboratory
The Fisher Laboratory studies the regulation of cell division and gene expression by a network of cyclin-dependent kinases.

Gnjatic Laboratory
The Gnjatic Laboratory focuses on human immune responses to cancer in an antigen-specific manner, defines new targets for the development of cancer immunotherapies, and asks how these immunotherapies work as well as why they may fail.

Guccione Laboratory
The Guccione Laboratory is currently interested in the function of development and disease of protein methyltransferases, and in modulation of alternative splicing using splice switching, antisense oligonucleotide-based approaches.

Hambardzumyan Laboratory
The Hambardzumyan Laboratory focuses on recent advances in our understanding of glioma biology, which have elucidated a complex tumor microenvironment consisting of both neoplastic and non-neoplastic cells.

Horowitz Laboratory
The Horowitz Laboratory investigates the effects of genetic variation on the effector and immunoregulatory roles of NK cells in cancer patients who are receiving immunotherapies. 

Jin Laboratory
The Jin Laboratory focuses on the discovery of selective inhibitors of histone methyltransferases, biased ligands of G protein-coupled receptors, and novel degraders targeting oncogenic proteins.

Kamphorst Laboratory
The Kamphorst Laboratory focuses on T-cell differentiation, with a specific interest in situations of chronic antigen stimulation, as seen in cancer.

Lagana Laboratory
The Lagana Laboratory develops and applies computational tools for integrative analysis of multi-omics data to investigate the role of coding and non-coding alterations on multiple myeloma pathogenesis and progression. We seek to understand the clinical implications of tumor clonal heterogeneity, inform patient risk stratification, and develop personalized therapy selection approaches guided by network genomics.

Lujambio Laboratory
The Lujambio Laboratory studies the mechanisms of liver cancer initiation and liver cancer maintenance, specifically how genetic alterations in cancer cells contribute to tumorigenesis, alter treatment response, and create vulnerabilities that may be targeted therapeutically.

Luksza Laboratory
The Luksza Laboratory applies approaches from information theory, statistical mechanics, and machine learning to understand how the immune system and other biophysical phenotypes affect the evolution of viruses and cancer. 

Manfredi Laboratory
The Manfredi Laboratory investigates the role of p53 in cell cycle checkpoints, the C-terminal basic region of p53 in transcriptional regulation and tumor suppression, and the transcriptional regulation of apoptosis.

Merad Laboratory
The Merad Laboratory studies the mechanisms that regulate the development and function of dendritic cells and macrophages, and their contribution to the induction of immune responses against pathogens and tumor cells in vivo.

Mulholland Laboratory
The Mulholland Laboratory studies prostate and bladder cancer, focusing on key clinical challenges encompassing cancer stem cells, metastasis, therapeutic resistance and methods to overcome resistance, such as immunotherapy.

Ochando Laboratory
The Ochando Laboratory investigates the immunological mechanisms of tumor acceptance mediated by MDSC, which can be exploited to prevent allograft rejection in transplantation.

O’Connell Laboratory
The O’Connell Laboratory focuses on two related aspects of biology that control the integrity of the genome: cell division cycle and signaling pathways, and determinants of chromosome structure.

Pan Laboratory
The Pan Laboratory investigates the role of ubiquitin signaling in cancer biology, using biochemical, molecular biology, and chemical biology approaches.

Papapetrou Laboratory
The Papapetrou Laboratory uses human pluripotent stem cells to understand the mechanisms of malignant and non-malignant genetic blood diseases, with the aim of developing new therapies.

Parsons Laboratory
The Parsons Laboratory seeks to identify the underpinnings of cancer and to use this information to improve cancer prevention and treatment. The lab employs a multidisciplinary approach to study cancer by combining molecular pathology and genetic studies of human tumor biopsies, human and mouse tumor models, metabolism, epigenetics, and biochemistry of signaling.

Pfleger Laboratory
The Pfleger Laboratory employs the synergistic systems of in vivo Drosophila (fruit fly) genetics, tissue culture, and in vitro biochemistry to investigate Ras signaling, and the Hippo tumor suppressor pathway, to develop fly models of human disease.

Poulikakos Laboratory
The Poulikakos Laboratory investigates kinase regulation and oncogenic signaling using small molecule inhibitors. We exploit the selectivity of these compounds to interrogate the complexity of growth factor signaling networks that promote transformation, tumor maintenance, and drug resistance.

Puleston Laboratory
The Puleston Lab seeks to understand how metabolic factors shape immune cell function in healthy tissues and disease. Major research themes center around metabolic factors in tumor microenvironments including metabolic control of immune cell differentiation and acquisition of tissue-specific identities.

Reddy Laboratory
The Reddy Laboratory is interested in the study of genes that govern cell homeostasis and how these controls are dysregulated during the neoplastic process.  We use a combination of biochemical, molecular, synthetic, chemical, and structural biological approaches, working in close collaboration with the clinical community, to develop and test small molecule anti-cancer compounds.

Sen Laboratory
The Sen Laboratory is focused on developing new treatment paradigms for molecular subsets of lung cancer. It takes a multidisciplinary approach to understanding tumor progression, immune modulation, phenotypic plasticity, and therapy resistance in lung cancer, with the goal of translating fundamental discoveries in the lab into more effective and durable treatments.

Skobe Laboratory
The Skobe Laboratory conducts groundbreaking molecular research linking the dynamic relationship between the lymphatic system and cancer metastasis.

Vabret Laboratory
The Vabret Laboratory studies the immunogenicity of transposable elements.

Wagenblast Laboratory
The Wagenblast Laboratory focuses on understanding how a normal blood stem cell can become cancerous. The goal of the lab is to uncover insights into the genetic, cellular, and developmental mechanisms of leukemia, with a particular focus on childhood leukemia, to identify therapeutic vulnerabilities of the disease.

Yu Laboratory
The Yu Laboratory identifies the molecular determinants in tumor microenvironments that play essential roles in cancer initiation and progression, therapeutic resistance of cancer cells, and maintenance of cancer stem cell niche. Our aim is to understand the underlying mechanisms of their effects and to develop therapeutic agents and combinations that can effectively inhibit the functions of these therapeutic targets.