Kaitlyn Bosch is a PhD Candidate in the Cancer Biology training program . She received her Bachelors of Science in Cell Biology and Biochemistry from Bucknell University.  Kaitlyn is currently investigating the application of PTEN-L, a secreted translational isoform of PTEN, as a  biologic targeted therapy for PTEN-deficient tumors. She is also studying the structure-function relationship of  PTEN-L.

Kaitlyn Cahuzac is a biomedical graduate student in the Parsons Laboratory and previously studied Biology at Columbia University and Georgia Institute of Technology during her undergraduate years. She is interested in the altered metabolism of PTEN deficient cancers and is investigating the consequences of PTEN loss on pyrimidine synthesis and ferroptosis in the hopes of discovering potential therapies for PTEN deficient cancers that lie within these pathways.

Abigail Lubin is a Cancer Biology PhD Candidate. She received a Master’s degree in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Her work focuses on PTEN in the context of nucleotide metabolism, DNA replication, and cell cycle dynamics. Abigail is also investigating the sensitivity of PTEN-deficient tumors to pharmacological inhibition of pyrimidine anabolism and the effects of PTEN loss during tumorigenesis on DNA replication biology.

Tiphaine Martin is a postdoctoral fellow with a background in computational biology, bioinformatics, and biostatistics. She is working to improve the identification and screening of patients in high risk for cancer. Tiphaine is also investigating the genetic variants (germline and somatic) identified in large omic data sets, including BioMe biobank Program and the TCGA/ICGC, with electronic medical records (EMR) and the Cancer Registry.  In addition to data sets from the Mount Sinai Hospital to identify and characterize new associations of genetic variants with cancer development and treatment response. She is also studying whether genetic variants come from specific ancestry and population founders. Moreover, she brings support to members of the Parsons’s lab as well as our collaborators in bioinformatics and biostatistics.

Sait Ozturk is a Post-doctoral Fellow and his work is focused, 1) The role of PTEN in advanced prostate cancer and 2) Physiological functions of PTEN-Long protein. The advanced prostate cancer project, can lead to findings of compounds which result in synthetic lethality in conjunction with the PTEN loss. The PTEN-Long project, investigates the metabolic roles of PTEN-Long using transgenic mouse models.

Sarah Pegno is a Senior Research Associate who is currently working on understanding the relationship between PTEN and PREX2 proteins, specifically the regulation of PTEN by PREX2, and their binding.

Jia Xu is Post-doctoral Fellow and currently investigating,  1) New target therapy to inhibit PI3K/Akt pathway using proteolysis targeting chimera (PROTAC) technology and 2) The anti-tumor immunity functions of PTEN-Long using a novel PTEN-Long overexpression mouse model and potential combinatory effect with immunotherapy.

Royce Zhou is an MD/PhD student interested in cancer epigenetics. He previously graduated from Columbia University where he majored in Biochemistry. Royce recently characterized the super-enhancer landscapes of numerous freshly resected colorectal carcinomas against patient-matched normal epithelium, finding systemic dysregulation. Interestingly, several cancer-specific super-enhancers were only found in vivo. Putative downstream target genes of highly recurrent super-enhancers in colorectal carcinomas were found to be critical for proliferation. He is currently studying the mechanistic basis for several of these dependencies. Royce is supported by an F30 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award for MD PhD Fellowship from the National Cancer Institute.