Welcome Qiaoyi, Chuan-Xu, and Becky!

Archive from August 2014

Welcome to Dr. Qiaoyi Wang, Dr. Chuan-Xu Liu and Becky Leifer as new group members. Qiaoyi comes to MIT from Professor Shi's lab at WVU where he worked on novel chemistry involving gold-catalyzed reactions. Qiaoyi is joining our Myc project team and has an interest in biological target identification for natural products that modulate transcription. Chuan-Xu is a physician-scientist with expertise in mechanisms of leukemogenesis and a former trainee of Chancellor Guo-Qiang Chen at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine. He is a recent recipient of a Milstein Medical Asian American Partnership Foundation fellowship. The fellowship will help to fund his research focused on developing new tools to modulate an oncogenic transcriptional regulator in acute myeloid leukemia known as AML1-ETO. Finally, Becky will join an expanding team in the area of modulating transcriptional processes in prostate cancer.

Welcome Megan, Rob! Congrats to Marius!

Archive from July 2014

Welcome Megan Berry and Rob Wilson as summer research interns! Megan is working with the Myc team and Rob is working on CETSA assays in an effort to demonstrate target engagement in cells for a Class II HDAC inhibitor.

Congratulations to Marius Pop on his new paper describing our efforts to target the oncoprotein ETV1 in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics! This collaborative project involving investigators at the Koch Institute, DFCI and the Broad Institute provided preliminary results for a new project focused on targeting deregulated transcription factors in prostate cancer. This project is part of the Transcend Partnership between KI and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Move complete! Welcome Eric!

Archive from April 2014

The Koehler lab has officially moved from labs in the Broad Institute to labs across the street in the Koch Institute. We are open for science!

Andrew testing out the new water system

We also welcome Dr. Eric Stefan to the lab for postdoctoral studies! Eric completed his PhD studies in organic chemistry at University of Notre Dame under the guidance of Professor Richard Taylor. His thesis focused on novel access to methyl-substituted polyketide structural units through 1,5-hydride shift and ether transfer. Eric also worked on the synthesis of chiral fragment molecules for high-throughput screening at the Broad Institute prior to moving to MIT. Eric joins project teams focused on developing novel modulators of oncogenic transcription factors.

Welcome Andrew, Rohit, and the Vegas twins!

Archive from January 2014

The Koehler lab welcomed several new members at the start of the year, including two new students and a couple of babies.

Andrew Chen, a graduate student in the Department of Biological Engineering, joins us from Cornell University’s undergraduate program in Biological Engineering. Andrew will be working on novel approaches to targeting Myc-associated transcriptional complexes. Prior to MIT, Andrew spent time as a Research Scientist at Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Rohit Thummalapali, an MD student in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program, comes to us from Yale University where his studies focused on Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. Rohit has joined a collaborative project involving the Bernstein and Suva labs at MGH aimed at developing probes for a core transcription factor network and chromatin-modifying enzymes involved in epigenetic reprogramming of glioblastoma cancer stem cells.

Finally, we welcome our two youngest members of the group, Nico Emmerich Sandoval Vegas and Maximo Aaron Torrealba Vegas. Angela delivered Nico and Max on January 22nd. The boys keep mom busy and occasionally make appearances at the Koch in their double stroller.