Welcome to all of our new faces!

In the new year, the Koehler lab is very pleased to be off to the races with many new faces added to our team in the past few months.

A formal welcome to Brandon Ng and Lenya Duong, two undergraduate students joining the RNA-binding protein team with our senior graduate student, Rob, and to Will Walker, our new research associate managing our SMM platform.

And a hearty welcome back to Jasmin Krüll, a former visiting graduate student now back at as a post-doc, and to Mo Toure, a former Harvard undergraduate student researcher now back as a graduate student in the MIT BE program.

Welcome all! We’re excited to have you and to get to work!

Welcome Yulong, Julie, and Florian!

The start of the new year brought three new faces to our team. The lab is pleased to welcome Dr. Yulong Su, Julie Urgiles, and Florian Kabinger!

Yulong received his PhD in in cancer biology from Oregon Health & Science University in 2017. His thesis work was conducted under Dr. Rosalie Sears and detailed previously uncharacterized mechanisms of c-Myc regulation through post-translational modifications that affect localization to the nuclear pore basket. He will be joining the MYC-focused team, where his knowledge of c-Myc biology will be a welcome addition.

Welcome, also, to Julie, a medical student in the Harvard-MIT Health Science & Technology (HST) program.  Julie received a B.S. in Chemistry from Cornell in 2017 and will join our group for the research portion of her training. She will be joining the existing team focused on oncogenic transcription factors in prostate cancer, where she will leverage her skills in synthetic organic chemistry to enable target engagement studies for small molecule probes in development against some of our favorite targets.

And, lastly, welcome, Florian! Florian is a visiting masters students from the University of Applied Sciences in Austria, supported by Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Fellowship. He brings expertise in molecular biology and biochemistry techniques, which both the adenoid cystic carcinoma team and the prostate cancer team are delighted to fold into ongoing mechanism of action studies for chemical probes currently in development.

Welcome, all!

New Look--And New Faces!

Welcome to the new look for the Koehler Lab website!

In order to better share our science with our fellow scientists and curious members of our wider community, we have streamlined our page and updated our content. We hope you'll take the time to click around to see what's new, but we wanted to be sure to start with some new faces in the lab!

Early this year we welcomed post doctoral associate Dr. Brice Curtin. Brice received his PhD in chemistry from UCLA in 2017. His thesis work, which focused on synthetic peptidomimetics to target anti-apoptotic protein-protein interactions, was conducted under Dr. Partick Harran. He will be joining the MYC-focused team, where we are eager to see him leverage his knowledge of organic chemistry and protein-protein interactions. Welcome, Brice!

Welcome, to Catherine Henry, a graduate student in Biological Engineering at MIT!  Catherine received a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Virginia in 2016 and joins us from a year spent working at the Nation Cancer Institute (NCI) on in vitro models for colorectal cancer. She will be joining the existing team focused on oncogenic transcription factors in prostate cancer, and is very interested in developing the next generation of chemical technologies for tackling tough targets.

And last, but certainly not least, welcome to our littlest yet of young members, Sebastián Arturo Jensen Vegas, born on July 26th and waving hello in his work onesie. As you can see, the rest of the Koehler-Vegas subgroup is pleased to meet him and enjoying his company.

It should also be said that all of these 'hellos' have also meant we've recently said 'good luck!' to several members moving on from the lab to new positions. Good luck to those who have recently moved on: Dr. Helen Evans to ImmunoGen, Dr. Dave Freeman to Kronos Bio, Kimia Ziadkhanpour to Mount Sinai. As well as good luck to our recently departed visiting students now finishing up their theses at their home institutions: Jasmin Krüll, MS at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen (Germany) and Rui Traquete at Instituto de Medicina Molecular (Portugal).

Stay tuned for more updates on news from the Koehler Lab!

Welcome Nick and Dave!

Archive from March 2016

The lab welcomes Dr. Nicholas Struntz, a chemical biology postdoc who comes to us from the Harki lab and the department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Minnesota. Nick is working on mechanism of action studies focused around a small molecule that binds to Max and identifying and evaluating context-specific Myc interactions. We also welcome Dr. David Freeman, a chemical biology postdoc who comes to us from the U.S. Army’s Public Health Command-Central located at JBSA Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio Texas.  David completed his PhD studies in organic chemistry at Colorado State University where he studied welwitindolinone alkaloid natural products under the guidance of Professor John Wood.   David is interested in the use of small molecules to probe transcription factors in prostate cancer and adenoid cystic carcinoma.

Welcome Rob; Congrats Andrew!

January 2016

The lab welcomes Rob Wilson, a graduate student in Biological Engineering at MIT.  Rob joins us from Purdue University, where he studied biochemistry and worked on developing peptide probes for tyrosine kinase activity. He will be working on novel approaches to attenuate oncogenic Ras signaling, and is also interested in chemical modulation of protein stability.

Congratulations to  Andrew Chen, who recently won the Wishnok Prize for the Bioengineering and Toxicology Seminar (BATS)!The prize is awarded for the best talks in the Fall and Spring semesters, and is given in honor of Pete Wishnok, who led BATS for decades.  Congratulations, Andrew!!

Welcome Helen, Thijs, and baby Arabella!

Archive from July 2015

The lab welcomes Dr. Helen Evans, a synthetic chemistry postdoc who comes to us from the Ritter Lab and the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard. Helen is working on medicinal chemistry related to small molecules that modulate deregulated transcription in prostate cancer, with emphasis on natural products. We also welcome Thijs Wildschut, a visiting Master's student from Utrecht University. Thijs is part of a program focused on cancer, stem cells, and developmental biology, making him a perfect fit for our team focused on Myc-mediated transcription. Finally, we welcome another young member, Arabella Josefine Vegas, born on July 24th. Little Arabella is letting mom work on grant applications and lecture materials for 20.320 over the summer and steering clear of her toddler brothers Nico and Max.

Arabella Josefine Vegas

Welcome Shelby!

Archive from January 2015

Welcome Shelby Pursley, a graduate student in Biological Engineering at MIT.  Shelby joins us from Louisiana State University, where she worked on gamete cryopreservation in microfluidic devices.  She will be joining an expanding team working on targeting oncogenic transcription factors, and is more specifically interested in exploring natural products, FDA approved drugs, and using novel compounds in combination for the treatment of prostate cancer.

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.