Sarosiek Lab
The Sarosiek Laboratory pursues research focusing on a fundamental question that has broad implications for health and disease: What determines whether a cell will live or die in response to damage or stress?
655 Huntington Avenue
Building 2, Room 229
Boston, MA 02115
Lab Team
Current Members
Kris pursued graduate training in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology at the University of Miami School of Medicine under the mentorship of Izidore Lossos, MD. After receiving his PhD, Kris joined the laboratory of Anthony Letai, MD, PhD, at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/ Harvard Medical School for his postdoctoral fellowship.
In collaboration with others in the Letai laboratory, Kris found that some cancer cells are more primed to undergo programmed cell death (apoptosis) than others, as measured by a novel assay called BH3 Profiling (Ni Chonghaile & Sarosiek, et al., Science, 2011). Cancer cells and patient tumors that are more primed to undergo apoptosis are consequently more sensitive to chemotherapy treatment. This finding potentially explains why some patients respond favorably to chemotherapy while others do not. Kris has also utilized BH3 profiling to identify novel interaction preferences among the BCL-2 family of proteins, finding that BID preferentially activates BAK while BIM preferentially activates BAX to trigger apoptosis (Sarosiek, et al., Molecular Cell, 2013)
More recently, Kris has characterized how apoptosis is regulated in healthy tissues and how this impacts cell fate decisions in response to damage and stress (Sarosiek, et al., Cancer Cell, 2017). A key finding of this work is that developmental regulation of apoptosis is a major determinant of the treatment-associated toxicities observed in pediatric cancer patients.
Co-mentored with Lee Rubin, Dept of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology
Master’s Degree in Pathology: Case Western Reserve University
Undergraduate Degree: California State University – San Bernadino
Undergraduate Studies: University of California Santa Barbara; University of Redlands (Redlands, CA)
Undergraduate Degree: University of Colorado at Boulder
Undergraduate Degree: Middle East Technical University
Graduate Degree: University of Heidelberg in Germany
Oyku grew up in the Aegean region of Turkey. She holds a BSc in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Middle East Technical University in Turkey and an MSc in Cancer Biology from the University of Heidelberg in Germany. With over five years of international research experience at prestigious institutions such as the German Cancer Research Center and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Oyku specializes in translational oncology and women’s health. Currently, Oyku is a Ph.D. student in the Biological Sciences in Public Health Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and has recently joined the Sarosiek Lab. Her dissertation project focuses on investigating therapy-associated senescence and its role in therapy resistance in high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma, the most common and aggressive type of ovarian cancer. She explores the molecular and genetic drivers of the therapy-associated senescence phenotype and identifies potential vulnerabilities to develop novel strategies for preventing therapy resistance. Outside of the lab, Oyku enjoys painting, photography, writing fiction, and exploring different cuisines.
Undergraduate Degree: B.S. in Biology from Boston College, 2019
Alumni
Undergraduate Degree: Swarthmore College
Graduate Degree: University of Connecticut (Storrs, CT)
Undergraduate Degree: St. Norbert College
Currently: Senior Scientist at Nikon BioImaging Laboratory (NBIL)
Graduate Degree: University of Connecticut (Storrs, CT)
View Gaurav’s Publications from the Sarosiek Laboratory
About me:
My scientific interests include any thing and every thing cell death, oxidative stress, lysosomes, nanoparticles and microscopy. I joined the Sarosiek lab to further understand cell death processes and apply this knowledge to either induce cell death (in case of cancer) or inhibit cell death to prevent some of the disease pathologies. My particular interest is to characterize the intrinsic cell death pathway following lysosomal leakage.
I did my grad school at the University of Connecticut (not far from here) where I studied silica induced oxidative stress and cell death in alveolar macrophages. Silica is responsible for the fibrotic lung disease silicosis in workers exposed to silica dust over a long period of time in certain occupational settings. Using live cell imaging, I have tracked the fate of macrophages from silica particle uptake to death. We found that silica can generate reactive oxygen species independent of NADPH oxidases and cause phagolysosomal leakage to induce cell death. Further, there is heterogeneity in cell death, where in, most cells die by apoptosis whereas some by necrosis.
Undergraduate Studies: Harvard College
Undergraduate Studies: California State University, Monterey Bay
Undergraduate Degree: Clarkson University
Graduate Degree: Clarkson University
Visiting Graduate Student, National University of Singapore
Undergraduate Degree: University of Leeds
Undergraduate Studies: University of Massachusetts – Amherst, 2023
Undergraduate Degree: University of Massachusetts Boston
Undergraduate Degree: Guru Nanak Dev University (Punjab, India)
Graduate Degree: Tsukuba University (Tsukuba, Japan)
Graduate Degree: University of Gothenburg (Gothenburg, Sweden)
Undergraduate Degree: Smith College (Northampton, MA)
Graduate Degree: University of Massachusetts Boston (Boston, MA)
PhD Thesis: Optimizing the Therapeutic Index for Medulloblastoma by Targeting Apoptosis
Undergraduate Degree: University of California, Berkeley