SHARED RESOURCES VITAL TO TCI RESEARCH PROGRESS
Shared Resources at TCI —integral to TCI’s recognition as an National Cancer Institute-Designated Cancer Center—provide access to state-of-the-art facilities and approaches that support numerous research programs, encourage interdisciplinary collaboration, and foster translation of scientific advances into novel therapeutics. Under the leadership of  Jerry Edward Chipuk, PhD , Associate Professor of Oncological Sciences and Dermatology, and poised for future growth, TCI’s Shared Resources comprise  Flow Cytometry ,  Mouse Genetics ,  Microscopy , and  Biostatistics . Together, they enable TCI’s high caliber of research, while minimizing unnecessary duplication of expertise, equipment, and space. While access is not restricted to TCI members, they do benefit by receiving reduced fees for service. 
 

The  Mouse Genetics Core  provides access to facilities for production of transgenic and gene targeted mice and related rodent embryology techniques, including gene editing by CRISPR/Cas9 .  

The  Microscopy Core  received a high end instrumentation grant from the National Institutes of Health that was used to purchase a super resolution STED-based microscope  (Leica TCS SP8 STED 3X) , and they recently installed a light sheet microscope (LaVision UltraMicroscope II)  to address the growing needs of TCI researchers. These instruments complement a fleet of confocal microscopes as well as an  Olympus FV1000 multiphoton  with stage adapters that permit intra-vital imaging of growing and disseminating tumors in different organ systems. A variety of image analysis platforms have been introduced, along with expert staff, in order to render and analyze large imaging data sets. The Core has been working to educate TCI members, and now offers an intensive microscopy course to graduate students and sponsors a monthly seminar series for all Mount Sinai researchers.  

The Bio-statistics Core works with Information Technology to develop research databases and perform analyses of small and big data in collaboration with TCI investigators. Additionally, TCI researchers have access to numerous department-based facilities that are vital for maintaining a leading edge in cancer research, including: 
  • Cancer Imaging 
  • General Histology 
  • Hematological Malignancies Tissue Bank 
  • Human Immune Monitoring 
  • Immune Histology 
  • Next-Generation Sequencing 
  • Seahorse Mitochondria Suite 
  • Vaccine Development
 
Since the establishment of TCI in 2008, there have been hundreds of publications by TCI members reporting on research that was supported by the Shared Resources Cores. Users experience an overall >75% satisfaction with services in recent surveys. Future plans call for expanded expertise in single cell genomics, cancer genomics computation, proteomics/metabolomics, and new shared facilities for experimental imaging, cancer experimental therapeutics, and cancer organoids that can be used to help predict how tumors will respond to therapeutic interventions. The overarching goal is to uncover the complexities of cancer biology to enable the development of effective therapies for optimal patient outcome.  

Dr. Chipuk, Associate Director of Basic Science Shared Resources, invites comments and suggestions. He can be reached at jerry.chipuk@mssm.edu. 
NEW TCI ROLES
New Co-Leader for Cancer Mechanisms Research Program

Emily Bernstein, PhD , Associate Professor of Oncological Sciences and Dermatology, has been named co-leader of the Cancer Mechanisms Research Program . As such, Dr. Bernstein and fellow co-leader Julio A. Aguirre-Ghiso, PhD, facilitate basic research on genetic, biochemical, and developmental pathways that drive cancer initiation and progression, and foster intra- and inter-program collaborations that accelerate the development of novel, targeted therapies. Dr. Bernstein received her PhD from State University of New York at Stony Brook/Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and her postdoctoral fellowship from The Rockefeller University. Her research is focused on epigenetic regulation of gene expression in multiple biological pathways, with the long-term goal of understanding the chromatin changes that take place at the molecular level during the transformation process of normal cells to cancer cells. Her research program is supported by NIH/NCI, St. Baldrick's Foundation, and the Melanoma Research Alliance.
Director, Multiple Myeloma Translational Research

Samir Parekh, MD , has been named Director, Multiple Myeloma Translational Research. In this role, he will be directing translational research for identification of biomarkers and new drug development across the spectrum of patients with myeloma. Dr. Parekh runs a laboratory focused on translational genomic analyses and also sees myeloma patients in the clinical setting. In addition to investigating biomarker identification for novel therapeutics, he leads clinical trials studying next-generation sequencing guided drug-repurposing for relapsed myeloma patients in collaboration with Joel Dudley, Ph,D. Dr. Parekh also collaborates with Nina Bhardwaj, MD, PhD, on neoantigen identification for personalized vaccine therapy in early as well as later stages of myeloma. Dr. Parekh is Associate Professor of Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology, and Associate Professor of Oncological Sciences.
Support Increased Rankings of Mount Sinai Hospitals!
NEW RECRUITS
J. Jaime Alberty, MD, FACS , has joined Mount Sinai as Assistant Professor of Surgery, Division of Breast Surgery. He sees patients at the Dubin Breast Center and Mount Sinai Queens. Dr. Alberty received his MD from the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine, where he also did his residency training in general surgery. He completed a breast surgical oncology fellowship at The Bryn Mawr Hospital in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. In his previous positions at NYU Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn and Staten Island University Hospital, Northwell Health, Dr. Alberty oversaw teaching of general surgery residents and medical students in breast surgery. Dr. Alberty's research interests include partial breast irradiation, inflammatory disorders of the breast, and racial disparities in breast cancer. He is fluent in English and Spanish.
Madhuri Devabhaktuni, MD, joined the Mount Sinai faculty in February as Assistant Professor of Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology. Based at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s, she will be working with Khalid O.Dar, MD, on establishing a new infusion center there. (Patients currently seen at St. Luke’s who need infusion services are referred to Mount Sinai West.) Dr. Devabhaktuni received her MD from Siddhartha Medical College in India, and completed residency in internal medicine and fellowship in hematology and oncology at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center. She most recently practiced at the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention.
M arta Luksza, PhD, has joined TCI as Assistant Professor of Oncological Sciences. Dr. Luksza received her PhD in computer science from Free University of Berlin and Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Germany. She was a visiting MSc student at The Linnaeus Centre for Bioinformatics at Uppsala University in Sweden, and completed her degree at Warsaw University in collaboration with the Laboratory of Mass Spectrometry, Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences. Dr. Luksza conducted postdoctoral research at Columbia University and most recently was a research associate at the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University. Dr. Luksza and collaborators created the first mathematical model to predict how a cancer patient will respond to immunotherapy , as reported in Nature . 
Adam Margolin, PhD , a n internationally renowned computational biologist, will join Mount Sinai on April 1 as Chair and Professor of the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology, and Senior Associate Dean for Precision Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine. Dr. Margolin has most recently led computational research and informatics software development programs at Oregon Health & Science University.
HONORS AND AWARDS
Margaret H. Baron, MD, PhD, Named NIH Study Section Chair

Margaret H. Baron, MD, PhD, has been named chair of the Molecular and Cellular Hematology (MCH) Study Section of the National Institute of Health (NIH) , effective July 2018. MCH reviews applications involving both basic and applied aspects of normal and abnormal hematopoiesis, as well as basic and applied aspects of the formed elements of the blood. Dr. Baron has served on MCH since 2013. Dr. Baron is the Fishberg Professor of Medicine, Senior Associate Dean for Education, and Director of the MD-PhD Program . She is also Professor of Oncological Sciences and Professor of Cell, Developmental & Regenerative Biology. Dr. Baron is a graduate of the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. She received her MD from Harvard Medical School and her PhD in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Following a year of residency training in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, she started her own independent research program in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. At Mount Sinai since 1997, Dr. Baron has nearly 30 years of continuous, independent NIH-sponsored research funding in developmental hematopoiesis.
Eirini Papapetrou, MD, PhD, Recipient of Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Scholar Award

Eirini Papapetrou, MD, PhD , Associate Professor of Oncological Sciences and Associate Professor of Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology, has been granted a Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) Scholar Award in the amount of $110,000 per year for five years starting July 1, 2018, for her research titled “Studying the biology and therapeutic vulnerabilities of leukemia stem cells using AML-iPSCs.” Dr. Papapetrou’s laboratory , which has pioneered the modeling of myeloid malignancies with induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), recently developed the first iPSC models of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and found that hematopoietic cells derived from them recapitulate salient features of leukemia stem cells (LSCs). Using this model, Dr. Papapetrou and her team can prospectively obtain large numbers of genetically clonal LSC-like human cells and perform genome-wide integrative molecular analyses and large-scale screening. The LLS funding will enable investigation of key molecular mechanisms sustaining LSC properties that may constitute promising therapeutic targets. Dr. Papapetrou received her MD and PhD from the University of Patras in Greece and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. She was elected in December to membership in the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI) , one of the oldest and most respected medical honor societies in the United States, and will be formally inducted at the annual ASCI meeting in April. 
Beth Israel Heart Award to Peter Kozuch, MD

Peter Kozuch, MD , Associate Professor of Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology, received a 2018 Heart Award at Mount Sinai Beth Israel (MSBI). The annual Heart Awards honor employees with five or more years of service who continuously focus on keeping patients safe and providing the best patient experience. Dr. Kozuch is Site Director for the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology at MSBI. He is also Co-Chair of the Mount Sinai Health System Disease Focus Group Gastrointestinal Oncology Multidisciplinary Program and Director for the Hematology-Oncology Fellowship at MSBI. His practice is focused on multispecialty care of patients with cancers of the digestive tract.
Poem Extols Stem Cell Transplantation 
Check out “The Many Wonders of Transplant,” a Hamilton/hip hop-inspired poem by Amir S. Steinberg, MD , Assistant Professor of Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology.
Ernesto Guccione, PhD, is part of an international, multidisciplinary team that has been shortlisted for an award of up to $27.8 million through Cancer Research UK's Grand Challenge . Only 10 teams out of 134 representing 41 countries were selected to advance to the final round. Dr. Guccione joins Meritxell Huch, PhD , with The Gurdon Institute/University of Cambridge and her team of experts from the UK, The Netherlands, France, Austria, and the United States to investigate what happens inside cells when they are exposed to too much fat and how that can lead to cancer. The team will submit a full application in May. Award recipients will be announced in November. Dr. Guccione is Associate Professor of Oncological Sciences and Associate Professor of Pharmacological Sciences. His laboratory uses biochemistry, mouse models, and next-generation sequencing to investigate basic mechanisms of transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation in order to identify therapeutic opportunities and inform clinical applications.
GRANT OPPORTUNITIES



New Award Mechanism from American Cancer Society (ACS)  
Mission Boost Grants — designed to support select current and past ACS grantees specifically for the translation of their research to human testing. 
MOBILE MAMMOGRAPHY
Giving women access to screening mammography in their communities is becoming a reality, thanks to a new mobile mammography program that will provide up to 30 mammograms a day in a specially designed van. Women with abnormal mammograms will be called to arrange for follow-up visits. Mount Sinai won a competitive grant as part of a New York State early breast cancer awareness and detection initiative, and will receive more than $4 million from the state for the program.   Laurie Margolies, MD , Professor of Radiology and Chief for Breast Imaging at the Mount Sinai Health System, is the medical director for the mobile mammography program.
Recent publication from Dr. Margolies:

NEW UNIT FOR IMMUNOCOMPROMISED CHILDREN

Cancer patients admitted to Kravis Children’s Hospital at Mount Sinai will benefit from the new Jack Martin Fund Inpatient Unit for Children’s Cancer and Blood Disease , opened on March 1, which provides a safe and family-friendly environment for immunocompromised children.
MARCH IS MYELOMA AWARENESS MONTH
The Multiple Myeloma Program at Mount Sinai is the largest in the New York metropolitan area and one of the largest in the country, with a total patient population of 3,500. In calendar year 2017 the program saw 503 new patients. Since 2013, seven phase 3 clinical trials in relapsed myeloma with one to three lines of therapy have been conducted, resulting in the approval of panobinostat, ixazomib, daratumumab, and elotuzumab, as well as additional data on carfilzomib (The effect of novel therapies in high-molecular-risk multiple myeloma) .
UPCOMING PRESENTATIONS
Nina Bhardwaj, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology, is representing TCI at these meetings: 
 
Panel Discussion— Tumor neoantigEn SeLection Alliance (TESLA) – discovering the keys to developing personalized cancer vaccines.
 
Major Symposium Presentation— Personalized therapies: Neoantigen discovery and vaccination 
Educational Session Presentation—Advances in Cancer Vaccines.

 Cardinale Smith, MD , Associate Professor of Medicine, Hematology and Oncology, and Associate Professor of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, is presenting at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine , March 14-17 . Presentation title: Goals of Care Conversations in Advanced Cancer: Patient Perceptions versus Reality.
Frontiers in Oncology Lecture:
From Cancer Dependence to Cancer Therapeutics

Distinguished guest speaker William Sellers, MD, will present on Tuesday, March 20, at 12 noon in Goldwurm Auditorium, Icahn Medical Institute. Dr. Sellers is a core institute member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, and faculty member and senior advisor to the president for experimental therapeutics at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He has spent his academic career at the intersection of cancer biology and cancer genomics, investigating the basic mechanisms of tumor development. 

Next up on June 5th is Michael N. Hall, PhD , Professor of Biochemistry, Biozentrum of the University of Basel, Switzerland. A pioneer in TOR-signaling and cell growth control, Dr. Hall has shown that cell growth is a highly regulated process controlled by TOR-dependent signaling pathways.
PUBLICATIONS
NEW IN NATURE


This paper reports on a new multidisciplinary Drosophila/chemistry platform for generating novel polypharmacological drugs that are optimized for kinase networks both within the tumor and in the context of the whole animal. The authors identify multiple kinase activities that strongly impact response to the approved drug sorafenib, and demonstrate how this information can be used to tune drugs such as sorafenib into new and potentially improved therapeutic spaces. 

Corresponding Authors:  Arvin C. Dar, PhD , Assistant Professor of Oncological Sciences and Pharmacological Sciences, member of the TCI Cancer Mechanisms program; and Ross L. Cagan, PhD , Professor of Developmental and Regenerative Biology, Oncological Sciences, and Ophthalmology, Director of the Center for Personalized Cancer Therapeutics, and member of the TCI Cancer Mechanisms program.

NEW IN CLINICAL CANCER RESEARCH


Jia Chen, ScD , Jun Zhu, PhD , and colleagues identify novel markers that may improve prognostic efficiency while shedding light on molecular mechanisms of breast cancer progression and may lead to development of new targets for therapy. Dr. Chen is Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health; Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology; Oncological Sciences; and Pediatrics; and member of TCI Cancer Prevention and Control. Dr. Zhu is Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences. 

NEW IN JOURNAL OF ONCOLOGY PRACTICE


Nina A. Bickell, MD , and colleagues identify racial disparities in prostate cancer care, underlying reasons for poorer quality care, and opportunities for reversing treatment underuse. Interestingly, similar challenges are evident in both academic and municipal hospitals. Dr. Bickell is Professor of Population Health Science and Policy, Professor of Medicine, General Internal Medicine, and Associate Director of TCI Cancer Prevention and Control. 


Do you have news for the next issue of  TCI Connections ? 
Please send to  Janet.Aronson@mountsinai.org  

Remember to share breaking news and high impact news that might be appropriate for media coverage with Marlene Naanes in the Press Office. This may include pending FDA drug/device approvals, studies/trial results being published in high-impact journals, and patient stories. The more lead time you can give Marlene, the better—ideally, four weeks or when a paper is accepted by the journal. Embargoes will always be honored and news will only be released with your approval. Please also remember to send ASCO abstracts when they are approved.


TCI Connections is a monthly publication for the Tisch Cancer Institute Community
Ramon Parsons, MD, PhD, TCI Director
Co-editors: Janet Aronson and Rhaisili Rosario