Contact
- Deputy Director for Scientific Strategy
- Kalbach-Newton Professor in Cancer Research
233 S 10th Street
BLSB 1050
Philadelphia, PA 19107
Team
Target Inhibitor Working Group
Manoela Tiago, PhD
Research Associate
Manoela studies targeting drug-tolerant tumor cells to targeted therapy in cutaneous melanoma.
Signe Caksa
MD, PhD Student
Signe studies SOX10 regulation in targeted inhibitor resistant cutaneous melanoma.
Scott Varney, PhD
Research Associate
Scott studies therapeutic options for inducing inflammatory cell death in uveal melanoma.
Connor Ott
PhD Student
Connor researches target therapies and YAP/TAZ-TEAD signaling in drug tolerant melanoma.
Haley Wilson
PhD Student
Haley studies cutaneous melanomas with poor prognosis including novel therapeutic targets for NRAS mutant melanoma and intrapatient heterogeneity in metastatic melanoma.
Will Madden
Research Technician
Will is responsible for completing essential molecular biology techniques and investigating the role of FOXD3 transcription factor in drug tolerance in melanoma cell lines.
Uveal Melanoma Working Group
Vivian Chua, PhD
Assistant Professor
Vivian studies the role of stromal growth factors in regulating uveal melanoma response to targeted inhibitors and is currently studying dependencies that could be therapeutically targetable in BAP1-deficient uveal melanoma.
Francis Waltrich, Jr
PhD Student
Frank studies transcriptional-based inhibitors for targeting advanced-stage uveal melanoma.
Nikole Fandino Pachon
Research Technician
Nikole investigates the effects of TEAD inhibitors in uveal melanoma.
Immuno-oncology Working Group
Erica Kitterman
Research Technician
Erica studies the effects of BRAF and MEK inhibitors on promoting pyroptosis in cancer cells through gasdermin E (GSDME) cleavage and determining the ways in which GSDME modulation can alter the tumor immune microenvironment.
Daniel Erkes
Assistant Professor
Dan studies the impact of pyroptosis on the tumor immune microenvironment of melanoma. He also helps to manage the numerous projects in the lab and mentor many of the trainees.
Computational Biology & Bioinformatics
Timothy Purwin, MS, PhD
Clinical Informatics Specialist
Computational Biology, Bioinformatics and Next-Gen. Sequencing
Glenn Mersky, MS
Clinical Informatics Specialist
Glenn works across the Aplin lab to support lab members with their bioinformatics needs for multiple projects.
Jelan Haj
Research Technician
Jelan runs pipelines to process RPPA data into meaningful datasets.
Other
Diana Melissaratos
Research Technician
Diana handles general lab organization and maintenance of computer-based records of methods and reagents.
George Mellor
Trainee
George studies the effects of FOXD3 expression on mutant BRAF melanoma proteomics and transcriptomics.