Lab Members

Principal Investigator

Lawrence Kwong, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Translational Molecular Pathology

Kwong received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and later MD Anderson. He previously worked primarily with genetically engineered mouse models of colon cancer and melanoma, and the laboratory is now expanding to patient samples, patient-derived xenografts and big data analysis to rationally identify new anti-cancer therapies for both the first-line and counter-resistance settings.

Gabriele Romano, Ph.D.
Main focus: melanoma, drug resistance, immunotherapy

Romano's research activity is focused on the study of molecular mechanisms involved in cancer drug resistance and the identification of effective counter-therapies. He currently works on melanoma mouse models and human samples to identify and validate promising therapeutic targets in combination with MAPK pathway inhibitors and/or immunotherapy. His ultimate goal is to classify personalized therapeutic approaches which can translate into the clinical practice, using a multi-disciplinary, mechanism-driven strategy.
 

Sharmeen Chagani, Ph.D.
Main focus: cholangiocarcinoma, drug resistance, chromatin modifiers

Chagani received her Ph.D. from Oregon State University in 2016, where she investigated the role of the Vitamin D Receptor and the Retinoid-X-Receptor alpha in melanoma. She also performed a high throughput screen to identify compounds against metastatic melanoma. Because of her keen interest in understanding the biology of cancer epigenetics, she joined the Kwong Lab in March 2017. Her work so far has been translational with an emphasis on in vivo drug efficacy for cholangiocarcinoma. Particularly, she is exploring the role of chromatin modifiers as tumor suppressors and identifying novel oncogenic targets for exploring combinatorial treatment strategies. She is also working on identifying drug resistance mutations in post-treatment patient samples.
 

Karim Koleilat, M.D. 
Main focus: colon cancer, melanoma, bioinformatics

Koleilat’s interests lie in cancer class discovery using various pathway enrichment tools to pinpoint tumorigenic drivers and immune activators for drug targeting as well as validating these findings on the bench. His current work is aimed primarily at colon cancer and melanoma.