Congrats to co-first authors Drs. Naveen Kumar Tangudu and Raquel Buj on their new preprint. Using CRISPR screens and pharmacological approaches, they identified purine metabolism as a metabolic vulnerability of p16-low cancers. Read more here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.15.549149v2
A warm welcome to Dr. Amadine Amalric, who joined the lab in early June. She comes to us from France where she studied RNA modifications in cancer. In the lab, she will studying compartmentalized metabolism and is co-mentored by our long-term collaborator Dr. Nate Snyder at Temple University.
Congratulations to Allison- her Magee Women’s Cancer Research Center grant to study metabolism in ovarian cancer quiescence was funded!
Big congrats to Aidan for passing his comprehensive exam this week and becoming a PhD candidate! We had a fun donut celebration!
Congratulations to Raquel for her well-deserved promotion to Research Assistant Professor! Raquel has independently moved an entire arm of the lab’s research program forward by becoming an expert in the tumor microenvironment.
Congrats to Aidan- the very first proposal he wrote was funding through a spot on the highly competitive Pharmacology T32! Next up- submitting his F31!
A huge congratulations to Apoorva who was named this week as a Hillman Postdoc Fellow for Innovative Research! This will provide professional development support as she works toward her K99 application.
Out now! The lab’s paper on how ATM inhibition induces macropinocytosis to promote survival through uptake of nutrients. Congrats to all authors!
Read the paper here: https://rupress.org/jcb/article-abstract/222/1/e202007026/213697/ATM-inhibition-drives-metabolic-adaptation-via?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Big congrats to Dr. Uboveja- this is her first grant! A huge milestone! This award will allow her to continue her very exciting work on wildtype IDH1 in cyclin E-driven ovarian cancer.
Congrats to Raquel who recently received a career development award from the Melanoma Research Foundation to better understand how a secreted factor promotes immunotherapy resistance in melanoma. This 2-year award will allow her to continue this very important work as she becomes an immunologist!
We are hiring and looking for new postdocs to move into our shiny new lab space in an old Ford factory that the University of Pittsburgh has renovated. If you are interested in senescence, metabolism, epigenetics, the microenvironment in cancer- reach out!
Our lab expansion is underway! Dr. Zhentai Huang is our new Research Scientist and lab manager. His lengthy experience in cell culture and management is a huge benefit to our lab. We are excited to have Zhentai in the lab!
Congratulations to the newly-minted Dr. Leon for the successful defense of her PhD this morning! Her work on DOT1L and the SASP was viewed as highly impactful by her committee!
Kelly will be transitioning to a consulting position in the near future.
The lab is expanding! We are so excited for Apoorva Uboveja to join the lab this summer. She comes to us from the University of Delhi, where she received her PhD in cancer biology, studying the tumor suppressor p73. Welcome (soon) Apoorva!
Raquel’s paper on p16 loss in abrogation of the SASP was accepted this week! We initially thought this was an uninteresting observation, and it has not only turned into a paper, but also a new direction for her work. Congratulations Raquel and co-authors Kelly Leon and Marlyn Anguelov.
We bid a fond farewell to postdoc Daniel (Chi-Wei) Chen, who is moving back to Taiwan to start as an Assistant Professor at National Dong Hwa University. While we will miss him, this was an outstanding opportunity and huge accomplishment. Congrats!
We are looking to expand our lab team! With new anticipated funding in 2021, multiple positions are open to study metabolism, epigenetics, and senescence in cancer. We support both scientific and professional development and foster a diverse and inclusive lab environment. For more information, see: https://airdlab.com/positions.
Email Dr. Aird with a cover letter and CV if interested.
We are thrilled that our DoD Ovarian Cancer Research Program Teal Expansion Award application was recommended for funding. This project will expand on Daniel’s finding that ATM inhibition increases tumor cell branched chain amino acid uptake via macropinocytosis. We are even going to do some immunology (in collaboration with Dr. Greg Delgoffe)! We are grateful for this opportunity to learn more about ovarian cancer and how to treat it.
Graduate student Erika Dahl passed her defense today! What an accomplishment, especially during a pandemic!
Lab t-shirts were made to celebrate!
Congratulations to Daniel and co-authors Raquel, Erika, and Kelly for the acceptance of this pandemic-derived paper! Daniel had an interesting observation that ATM status corresponds to metabolic gene signatures, and inhibition of ATM in high grade serous ovarian cancer (usually ATM wildtype) synergizes with the FDA-approved metabolic drug fenofibrate.
