Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Mount Sinai Today Blog

             

SEN LABORATORY
Biology and Therapy of Lung Cancer

Meet the Team

Dr. Subhamoy Chakraborty, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow

ABOUT SUBHAMOY

Subhamoy Chakraborty while studying microbiology in his undergraduate years in Kolkata, India, developed an interest in the field of Biochemistry which he followed during his MS in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Calcutta. Later after receiving the CSIR-JRF fellowship award from Govt. of India in 2015, he joined the lab of Dr. Sanjay Ghosh in the same department. In his doctoral research working in redox biology, he identified the axis of AMPK, SIRT1, and p53 as crucial regulators of cellular autophagy under nitro-oxidative stress.
He joined Dr. Triparna Sen’s lab at Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai in June 2022. Subhamoy joined the Sen Lab in 2022 and since then been focused on identifying novel therapeutic strategies for small-cell lung cancer. He is specifically focused on identifying the mechanism of how DNA damage response pathways modulate anti-tumor immunity in this disease. During his tenure in the Sen Lab, he has already published a first-author paper in Clinical Cancer Research demonstrating the anti-tumor role of lurbinectedin in de novo and transformed small cell lung cancer preclinical models (PMID: 37382635). The overarching goal of his research is to improve the overall survival of patients with small-cell lung cancer.

Two truths and a lie:

  1. Subhamoy has many of his poems published in little magazines.
  2. Subhamoy has staged a performance as a lead actor in a group theater.
  3. Subhamoy used to be a body-builder.

Dr. Utsav Sen, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow

ABOUT UTSAV

Utsav received his BS in microbiology from the University of Calcutta, and a MS in biotechnology at Bangalore University. He earned his Doctoral Degree in allied health and basic sciences (Specialization: cancer stem cell biology) from the Yenepoya Deemed to be University, Mangalore, India. During his PhD, Utsav received a Senior Research Fellowship from ICMR, Govt. of India. He also has received an opportunity to work as a vising scholar at CSIR-IICT, Hyderabad, India. He moved to Israel for his first post-doctoral fellowship at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He worked on TNBC biology and targeting TNBCs by a novel cell death process called ferroptosis.
Utsav joined the Sen lab in 2022 and has continued to work in ferroptosis biology as a novel therapeutic strategy to target non-small cell lung cancer. He has a specific interest in Stearoyl coenzyme A desaturase-1 which is a multitasker in cancer, metabolism, and ferroptosis (PMID: 37029018).

Two truths and a lie:

1. Utsav is an amazing cook.
2. Utsav plays the piano.
3. Utsav can sing like a pro.

Dr. Avisek Banerjee, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow

ABOUT AVISEK

Avisek received his BS and MS in Zoology from University of Calcutta. Following his passion to research in cancer biology he joined the lab of Dr. Kaushik Biswas at Bose Institute after receiving UGC-JRF fellowship award from Govt. of India. His doctoral research on epigenetic regulation of genes in cancer revealed the transcriptional regulation of a key ganglioside synthase gene-B4GalNT1 (GM2-GD2-synthase) in cancer. He has also been awarded an ICMR-International travel grant from Govt. of India to present his Ph.D. thesis work at Max Plank Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, Germany. He did his first postdoc at Yale School of Medicine where he investigated the potential role of ESCRTs in direct control of cancer cell-intrinsic innate immune activation through cGAS-STING pathway.
Avisek joined the Sen Lab at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2023 and has been focused in understanding the histologic transformation and lineage plasticity in lung cancer. In parallel, he is also investigating in various mechanisms SCLC cells employ to develop drug resistance with an overarching aim to translate his findings to clinics.

Two truths and a lie:

  1. Avisek enjoys mentoring young minds for scientific research through active participation in various platforms like SACNAS-The National Diversity in STEM conferences, Intersections Science Fellow Symposium (ISFS), and ENVISION by Women in STEM in the USA.
  2. Avisek is a singing and piano pro.
  3. Avisek’s cooking skills are so fire, and he has received more compliments than a chef at a food critic convention!

Dr. Debdatta Halder, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow

ABOUT DEBDATTA

Debdatta Halder has been a postdoctoral fellow in the Sen Lab since December 2023 and is currently working on unraveling lineage plasticity of cancer cells in lung cancer. She had been previously involved in dissecting the intratumor heterogeneity at single-cell level and understanding cytoskeletal mechano transduction during tumor progression. Debdatta received her PhD in Life Sciences from Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (c/o Jadavpur University, India) in 2020. Debdatta likes to dream with eyes wide open and envisions a world without cancer.
Apart from her research, Debdatta is a quintessential Bengali, born and brought up in Kolkata (India) and thrives on everything Bengali. Music, food, nostalgia and books are her eternal friends.

Truths are backdated, let’s just share some lies.

1. Debdatta is not a disciple of the music maestro Pandit Ajoy Chakraborty
2. Debdatta hates NYC
3. Cancer cells are homogeneous and unchangeable

Dr. Yosuke Dotsu, MD, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow

ABOUT YOSUKE

Dr. Yosuke Dotsu was working as a respiratory clinical physician in Japan for over 10 years, then went to graduate school to deepen his knowledge about lung cancer. He has spent time in graduate school developing T cell-based immunotherapy through metabolism, and he found a novel compound to regulate mitochondria, which led to T cell activation and significant antitumor effects even in low immunogenic tumor animal models.
Dr. Dotsu the Sen lab in April 2023. He is focused on identifying mechanisms of acquired resistance to targeted therapies in lung cancer. He is also focused on dissecting the molecular landscape of thoracic neuroendocrine tumors by performing multi-omic analysis of patient samples.

Yazhini Mahendravarman, MSc, MS
Research Associate

ABOUT YAZHINI

Yazhini received her Bachelors and Masters in Zoology with Minor in Botany and Biochemistry from the University of Madras, India. She was the only person in her university to receive the Science Project Scheme Award from the Tamil Nadu State Council for Science and Technology for her thesis project. She moved to the US to pursue her passion for Chemistry and Biochemistry and she received a Masters from the University of Texas at Arlington for the same. At UTA she worked on pre-mRNA processing and maturation which she presented at the Discover conference. She also received Charles K Baker Character Fellowship Award from the department for her selfless service to the graduate student’s community. After her masters she worked at the University of Texas at Austin designing Biosensors for various metabolites in mammalian system.
She joined the Sen Lab in January 2023. She is focused on immune modulation in Small Cell Lung Cancer with respect to DNA damage response and various drugs that are in clinical trial.

Two truths and a lie:

1. Yazhini likes to visit the museum in her leisure time.
2. Yazhini loves roller coasters and has tried every roller coaster in the country.
3. Yazhini is hypermobile.

Vrinda Jethalia, MS
Bioinformatician

ABOUT VRINDA

Vrinda is a Bioinformatician in the Bioinformatics for Next Generation Sequencing core (BiNGS) within the Tisch Cancer Institute (TCI), and she joined the Sen Lab in January 2024. She graduated with a master’s in Bioinformatics from Boston University. During her master’s she had completed an internship at Merck & Co., where she worked on Genome Annotation of a vaccine production strain. Prior to her master’s, she had worked as a Research Scientist at HealSeq Precision Medicine in Bangalore, India, where she primarily focused on RNA-Seq analysis, WES variant analysis and Boolean Modeling.

Charles Coleman, MS
Bioinformatician

ABOUT CHARLES

Charles Coleman is an Associate Bioinformatician at BiNGS who graduated from the College of William and Mary with a B.S. in Computational and Applied Mathematics and Statistics in 2022. His previous experience in bioinformatics was as an intern at the National Institutes of Health’s Laboratory of Receptor Biology and Gene Expression within the National Cancer Institute. Charles works with the Sen Lab since July 2022. His background is largely based in statistics, and he plans to eventually attend medical school to practice as a physician that blends sophisticated research tools and patient care.

Jennifer Nuccio
Administrative Coordinator

ABOUT JENNIFER

I am a former Publicist/Event Coordinator who did a 180 in 2009 and started my career in Healthcare after being in the Entertainment industry for 10 years. At my former Hospital, I worked for prestigious MD’s in the Sports Medicine world and am happy to have excelled to where I am now!

I still very much enjoy interacting with people, helping and organizing functions, fundraisers and events. Music is also a big passion of mine!

Kedwin Ventura, MS
Associate Researcher

ABOUT KEDWIN

Kedwin Ventura received his Bachelor’s of Science in Biochemistry with a minor in Medical Anthropology from SUNY Potsdam. He received his master’s degree in Biomedical Science from The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
He joined the Sen Lab in March 2024 as Associate Researcher. Prior to The Sen Lab Kedwin pursued his interest in cancer immunology in an allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation lab, developing novel curative treatments for high-risk leukemia at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. His work in acute myeloid leukemia led him to be selected as an oral presenter at American Society of Hematology 65th annual conference, where he discussed his research, exploring alternative death pathway in drug resistant myeloid malignancies. Kedwin plans to pursue a physician scientist career in oncology with a research interest in developing immunotherapies and studying cancer cell microenvironment during cell death and its immune consequences. Kedwin’s other interests are long hikes, brunch, and plant breeding.

ABOUT KEDWIN

Kedwin Ventura received his Bachelor’s of Science in Biochemistry with a minor in Medical Anthropology from SUNY Potsdam. He received his master’s degree in Biomedical Science from The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
He joined the Sen Lab in March 2024 as Associate Researcher. Prior to The Sen Lab Kedwin pursued his interest in cancer immunology in an allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation lab, developing novel curative treatments for high-risk leukemia at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. His work in acute myeloid leukemia led him to be selected as an oral presenter at American Society of Hematology 65th annual conference, where he discussed his research, exploring alternative death pathway in drug resistant myeloid malignancies. Kedwin plans to pursue a physician scientist career in oncology with a research interest in developing immunotherapies and studying cancer cell microenvironment during cell death and its immune consequences. Kedwin’s other interests are long hikes, brunch, and plant breeding.

Contact Us

Principal Investigator
Triparna Sen, PhD
Associate Professor
Co-Director, Lung Cancer PDX Program

E-mail
triparna.sen@mssm.edu

Lab Address
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
1425 Madison Avenue, 15th Floor
New York, NY 10029
United States

Office Address
1425 Madison Avenue, 15th Floor
New York, NY 10029
United States