Lab Team

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.

Graduate Student, 2020 – Present (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

Graduate Student, 2021 – Present
Undergraduate Studies: University of California Santa Barbara; University of Redlands (Redlands, CA)

Undergraduate Thesis Student, 2021 – Present
Undergraduate Studies: Harvard College

Graduate Student, 2022 – Present
Undergraduate Degree: University of Colorado at Boulder

Visiting Graduate Student, National University of Singapore (2023 – Present)
Undergraduate Degree: University of Leeds

Lab Manager, 2023 – Present
Undergraduate Studies: University of Massachusetts – Amherst, 2023

Graduate Student, 2023-Present
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.

Graduate Student, 2022 – Present
Undergraduate Degree: B.S. in Biology from Boston College, 2019