Lab Members

Markus Müschen, MD-PhD, is the Director of the Center of Molecular and Cellular Oncology, Arthur H. and Isabel Bunker Professor of Hematology, and Professor of Immunobiology at Yale University. He also serves as Chief of the Division of Basic Science of Yale Cancer Center. His research program focuses on signal transduction mechanisms in lymphoid malignancies and how these pathways can be intercepted for the treatment of drug-resistant leukemia and lymphoma. His laboratory established new conceptual frameworks for the understanding of B-cell signaling and energy metabolism and how these mechanisms are altered in lymphoid malignancies. Markus Müschen studied medicine at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany, Université de Nantes, France and the Institut Pasteur, Paris, France. After his clinical training in hematology-oncology with Volker Diehl at the University of Cologne, he completed postdoctoral fellowships in immunology with Klaus Rajewsky and Ralf Küppers and in leukemia genetics with Janet D. Rowley at the University of Chicago. Before coming to Yale, Markus Müschen’s laboratory was at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF, 2010-2017) where he served as Program Leader of the Hematological Malignancies Program at the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center. Markus Müschen is currently a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Faculty Scholar, an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Connecticut Academy of Science and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Lymphoma Research Foundation. His research has been supported by an NCI Outstanding Investigator Award (R35) since 2016. As Director of the Center of Molecular and Cellular Oncology at Yale, he serves as mentor for nine junior faculty. Müschen Laboratory Drug Discovery platform: http://lymphoblasts.org/

Nikol graduated from St. Petersburg’s State Institute of Technology (Technical University) in Russia with a B.Sc. in biotechnology, followed by M.Sc. in molecular biology and biotechnology at the ITMO Univeristy, SCAMT Institute also in St. Petersburg, Russia. Her bachelor thesis was focused on the synthesis of iron oxide nanoparticles and their internalization into FetMSC stem cells in vitro. It was followed by her master's thesis which studied reduction of copper (II) for overcoming drug resistance in tumor cells. Later on, she had an internship in University of Bordeaux where she worked on the impact of microenvironment on the physiology of adult stem cells derived from the wisdom teeth. After that she received an opportunity to join Müschen lab as a postgraduate associate.

Eden graduated from the University of Connecticut with a B.S. in Physiology & Neurobiology. As part of her honors degree, Eden completed a thesis under the mentorship of Dr. John Salamone pertaining to the histological analysis of rat nucleus accumbens electrodes utilized for research into motivational deficit. As part of the Müschen Lab, Eden is looking forward to learning more about B-cell cancer research before completing a graduate education.

I graduated from Zhejiang University, China, with a B.S. degree in biological sciences. In my undergraduate school, I joined a lab focusing on bacteria interactions with host innate immune responses and is lucky to be mentored by a talented and diligent graduate student. Now I am happy to be a graduate student in Markus Lab, focusing on MYC and BCL6, due to their interesting oscillated expression pattern in cancer cells and across B cell development. In my spare time, I like to play Genshin Impact and add more things to my home.

Dr. Kadriye Nehir Cosgun received her Ph.D degree in Stem Cell Biology in 2013 from Technical University of Dresden, Germany. Her PhD thesis titled “Kit regulates HSC engraftment across mouse human species barrier.” was supervised by Prof. Dr. Claudia Waskow and awarded with “The Best PhD thesis in 2013” by Center Regenerative Therapies Dresden. For her post-doctoral training she joined the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Markus Müschen at University of California, San Francisco and later at City of Comprehensive Cancer Center, Los Angeles. Dr. Cosgun is interested in Wnt/beta-catenin signaling in B cell malignancies and the role of pre-BCR signaling in  B-cell leukemia.

Yanzhi Feng completed his undergraduate training at Zhejiang University. After receiving his B.S. in biological science, he worked as a postgraduate research assistant at the same university, studying the function of FGFR signaling in angiogenesis. As a graduate student at the Department of Immunobiology, he is currently focusing on overcoming the therapy resistance of cancer.

Jake Fontaine is a graduate student who joined the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 2022. He obtained a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry from Emory university in 2022. There, he completed the honors program under the mentorship of Dr. Bruce Levin investigating the ecological role of bacteriophage in the human gut microbiome. Since joining the Müschen lab in 2023, he has now become interested in how B-cells sense pathological signaling in order to regulate their behavior, and how these mechanisms can be dysregulated in lymphomas and autoimmune diseases.

Jodi is a pediatric hematology-oncology fellow at Yale New Haven Children's Hospital. She completed her medical school training at Tufts University School of Medicine prior to moving to Yale for her pediatric residency. She hopes to pursue a career as a physician-scientist dedicating her research to improving the outcomes of children with high-risk relapsed or refractory leukemias.

William “Tyler” Frantz is a Pediatrics Resident in the American Board of Pediatrics Integrated Research Pathway at the Yale School of Medicine. He completed his MD/PhD at the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Medical Scientist Training Program. There, under the mentorship of Dr. Craig Ceol, he leveraged zebrafish to model melanocyte stem cells during regeneration. In addition to his clinical work as a pediatrics resident, Tyler studies hematopoiesis and leukemia predisposition genomics under the mentorship of Dr. Markus Müschen.

Takeshi Ito, M.D., Ph.D., is an Associate Research Scientist in the Muschen Lab. He earned his Ph.D. from Kyoto University, Japan, in 2018, where he studied the role of bone marrow endothelial cells, a component of bone marrow stromal cells, in regulating the immune system. He also has a background as a clinical hematologist (Board certified member of the Japanese society of hematology). His research focuses on visualizing B-cell signaling to further understand the molecular mechanisms that regulate B-cell development, humoral immune responses, and hematologic malignancies, with the goal of establishing novel therapeutic strategies.

Nishah Jaferi is an undergraduate student studying Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale College. She joined the Müschen Lab in October 2023 where she is researching the molecular basis of Src-family kinases in B-cell and T-cell signaling.

Hyeon-Young received her Master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Seoul National University, South Korea, in 2024. Her research focused developing a fusion Granzyme B protein, secreted by cytotoxic immune cells, to overcome cancer resistance driven by overexpressed anti-apoptotic proteins such as Serpin B9 and Bcl-2. In November 2024, funded by a Korean Research Foundation scholarship, she began exploring strategies to sensitize tyrosine kinase-resistant B-cell malignancies. She is excited to contribute to meaningful advancements in overcoming cancer resistance as part of the Müschen Lab.

Richard is an undergraduate student at Yale University on the pre-medical track, majoring in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and Classics. He joined the Müschen lab in May 2024 and is currently researching the functions and potential applications of MYC and BCL6 in B-cell lymphomas and leukemias.

Lars Klemm obtained his B.Sc. from the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany and subsequently got his M.Sc. from the same university in 2009. He has been the Laboratory Manager for the Müschen Lab since 2006. Lars is responsible for keeping the Müschen Lab operational, assisting the team with their experiments and finding/researching new technologies that can be applied to our studies.

Shalin Kothari, MD is an Assistant Professor of Medicine (Hematology) at Yale University. Dr. Kothari completed his residency in Internal Medicine at SUNY Upstate Medical University and his Hematology and Medical Oncology fellowship through the University at Buffalo/Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center where he was the Chief Fellow. He received his Medical Degree from Gujarat University in India. Dr. Kothari specializes in the treatment of lymphomas. His research is focused on using his clinical skills and basic science knowledge to answer scientific questions focused on mechanistic understanding of lymphoma therapeutics and its translation in the form of early-phase clinical trials for various aggressive forms of B-cell lymphomas including mantle cell lymphoma. He also conducts research in the Müschen Laboratory here at Yale University with a specific focus on developing new therapies for mantle cell lymphoma. He is a Lymphoma Research Foundation (LRF) Scholar, and an inductee of the ASH Advocacy Leadership Institute and the Gold Humanism Honor Society. He has presented his research in multiple national and international meetings and has won abstract achievement and travel awards.

Dr. Kohei Kume completed his PhD at Iwate University (Morioka, Japan) in 2011 with mentorship from Yasushi Saitoh, PhD. After a postdoctoral training at Iwate Medical University with mentorship from Satoshi S. Nishizuka MD, PhD, he joined Dr. Markus Müschen’s laboratory in 2017 at the Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope. He is currently a Research Scientist in Dr. Müschen’s laboratory at Yale University, and studies the mechanisms and functional significance of autonomous Ca2+ oscillations in oncogenic signaling of multiple B-cell malignancies.

My research interest lies mainly in discovering the novel molecular target to treat B cell leukemia and lymphoma. To do that, our lab leverages genetic engineered mouse model to study the role of gene of interests in 1) B cell development, 2) BCR-mediated immune response and 3) leukemogenesis.

Etienne Leveille is a hematology & oncology fellow in the ABIM Physician-Scientist Research Pathway at the Yale School of Medicine. He completed his medical school at McGill University, where he also studied the genetics of Parkinson’s disease and hereditary spastic paraplegia under the supervision of Dr. Ziv Gan-Or and mechanisms of inhibition of apoptosis in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma with Dr. Nathalie Johnson. While at McGill , Etienne was also the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the McGill Journal of Medicine. Etienne is a member of the Center of Molecular and Cellular Oncology and studies ferroptosis and other novel therapeutic approaches in B-cell malignancies under the mentorship of Dr. Markus Müschen.

Dr. Qin Li completed her PhD in cellular immunology in 2012 from Sun Yat-sen University Zhongshan School of Medicine. After a postdoctoral training at Yale University School of Medicine in Dr. Naftali Kaminski’s lab, she joined Dr. Markus Müschen’s laboratory from April 2022. Her PhD training is focusing on antigen specific CD4+T cell mediated immune response against Mycobacterium infection and postdoc training is focusing on B cell pathology in pulmonary fibrosis and identification of biomarkers in peripheral blood. Her research interest is in T/ B cell biology in human diseases, especially autoimmune diseases, and hematology cancer.

Christian received his MSc in Molecular and Cell Biology from Quinnipiac University in 2023. While earning his graduate degree, Christian conducted research in the de Lencastre Lab on miRNA-71 expression in response to b-amyloid toxicity in C. elegans. He continued his research working in the McGinnis Lab where he collected and analyzed samples taken from the Quinnipiac River for the presence of phthalates and plasticizers. During his last year of graduate school, Christian conducted independent study research in the Magie Lab on the role of Rho GTPases during gastrulation in Nematostella vectensis. In June 2023, Christian joined the Müschen Lab at Yale as a postgraduate associate where he will focus his research on signaling molecules downstream of B-cell-/T-cell receptors in relation to lymphoid malignancies.