Project 1: Adhesion-dependent regulation of Kras protein levels in lung cancer. Funded by the Koch Institute Frontier Award and Department of Defense Concept AwardProject 2: Adaptive and reversible resistance to Kras inhibition in pancreatic cancer in collaboration with the Jacks lab.

Project 1: Role of KrasV12 Levels in Metastasis: I study the role of hypoxia-induced changes in KrasV12 levels on morpho-dynamics, sphere formation, stemness and motility in lung cancer.Field of activity: Design, coordination and execution of project, microscopy, cell culture, molecular analysis techniques, hypoxic culture, sphere assays, 3D matrix culture, IHC on tumor tissue, supervision of undergraduate courses and 2 PhD projectsSelected Talk at 3rd Annual Cell Biology Retreat - 2015Conferences:Poster Presentation - AACR, Philadelphia - 2015Poster Presentation - Cell and Molecular Biology Symposium, Dallas - 2015Poster Presentation - AACR, San Diego - 2014Project 2: Validation of Biomarker Expressed on CTCs for the Diagnosis of Metastatic Cancers: I initiated the collaboration with Biotech company CureMeta to evaluate new biomarkers for the diagnosis of metastatic disease. This study is designed to evaluate expression of specific biomarkers on CTCs and correlation with metastatic and therapeutic stage of the patients. The project is performed in collaboration with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.Field of activity: Design and coordination of the study, imaging of patients samples, image analysisConsultant for CureMeta: since 03/2015 Conferences:Poster Presentation - Molecular Med TRI-CON, San Francisco - 2016Poster Presentation - Protein Engineering Summit (PEGS), Boston - 2015Poster Presentation - Keystone Symposia “Antibodies as Drugs”, Banff, Canada - 2015Project 3: Mechanical Compensation of BRAF Inhibition in Melanoma Survival: Design and supervision of the project and experimentsProject 4: Changes in Metabolic Profile of Lung Cancer Cells in Response to the Micro-environment: Design and supervision of the project and experiments

Field of activity: Imaging (live cell imaging, Calcium imaging, confocal and fluorescence microscopy), transfection of cell lines and primary cells (plasmid and/or siRNA), immunostaining of cells and tissues, quantitative image analysis with ImageJ, protein and RNA isolation, Western blot, Real-Time PCR, E. coli transformation, plasmid isolation, supervision of undergraduate studentsConferences:Poster Presentation - 56th Biophysical Society Meeting, San Diego - 2012Poster Presentation - Annual Evan's Day Symposium, Boston - 2011, 2012Invited Talk - Center for Medical Physics and Technology, University Nuremberg, Germany - 2011