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/

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.

Esma Fera is an international student from Kosovo who recently graduated with a B.S. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of New Haven. During her undergraduate studies, she investigated the role of the transcription factor KLF4 in the DNA damage response and survival of BRCA2-mutated ovarian cancer under the mentorship of Dr. Z. Ping Lin at Yale. She will be conducting research in the Müschen Lab, collaborating with Kadriye Nehir Cosgun to study Wnt/β-catenin signaling in B-cell malignancies. Esma aims to pursue a Ph.D. in cancer research, with a particular focus on molecular mechanisms underlying tumor development and therapeutic resistance.

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.

Binod G C, PhD joined Dr. Markus Müschen’s laboratory at Yale University as a postdoctoral associate in June 2025. He earned his M.Sc. in Medical Microbiology from Tribhuvan University, Nepal, in 2017, and completed his Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Toledo, Ohio, in May 2025. During his doctoral studies, Binod elucidated that Gfi1 promotes hematopoietic cell survival by repressing PU.1, which upregulates pro-survival genes Hemgn and Bcl-xL. At Yale, in Dr. Müschen’s laboratory, Dr. Binod G C’s research focuses on the molecular mechanisms regulating B-cell development and survival, with an emphasis on negative selection and the identification of therapeutic targets in B-cell malignancies. He also blogs at www.thesciencenotes.com, writing science education materials for students and educators.

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.

Ka-Won Kang is a hematologist at Korea University. Her research focuses on lymphoid hematologic diseases, and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Her recent studies include the identification of novel biomarkers in leukemia through extracellular vesicle microRNA profiling and proteomic analysis. She has also investigated the mechanisms of hematopoietic stem cell mobilization. She is currently engaged in translational research on hematologic malignancies and is dedicated to advancing novel therapeutic strategies to improve patient outcomes.

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.

Daisy graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2025 with a B.A in Biology. As an undergraduate, she conducted research at The Jackson Laboratory in Dr. Ed Liu’s lab, where she investigated the role of DNA cross-linking agents on BRCA1 promoter demethylation dynamics in PDX models of Triple negative Breast Cancer. In her role at Müschen Lab, Daisy is looking forward to contributing to research focused on B-cell cancers prior to beginning graduate school.

Stephen graduated from UC Berkeley in 2023 with a B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology. As an undergraduate, he conducted research in Dr. Jennifer Doudna's lab, where he investigated the role of the transcription factor GABP in reactivating the TERT promoter. He also worked in Dr. Jennifer Brown’s lab at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where he contributed to translational research projects in CLL. His work focused on characterizing the efficacy of the noncovalent BTK inhibitor pirtobrutinib in primary CLL cells from patients with acquired ibrutinib resistance driven by BTK C481S mutations. He also explored immune-related toxicities associated with PI3Kδ inhibition, identifying a correlation between elevated circulating Th17 cells at treatment initiation and the development of autoimmune toxicity. As a graduate student in Dr. Markus Müschen's lab, he is currently investigating therapeutic strategies that exploit hyperactivation of oncogenic signaling pathways in B-cell malignancies.

Pranav graduated with a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics from Dickinson College in May 2025. His undergraduate research involved understanding the gene expression profile of the PMA response in the AML cell line HL-60. He also worked on extending and improving a submodular feature-based algorithm to select subsets of scRNA-seq atlases while preserving the transcriptional heterogeneity within the data. In the Müschen Lab, Pranav hopes to expand his understanding of B-cell biology and computational techniques for analyzing genomic, epigenomic, proteomic, and transcriptomic datasets, among others, before attending graduate school.

Aditya Pandya earned his Bachelor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Mumbai in June 2023. He subsequently pursued a Master of Science in Biotechnology at Johns Hopkins University, completing the program in December 2024. During his time at Johns Hopkins, Aditya engaged in research across the Departments of Orthopaedic Surgery and Radiation Oncology. Under the mentorship of Dr. Janet Crane, he investigated the impact of glucocorticoids on skeletal angiogenesis. In the Radiation Oncology department, he worked with Dr. Fred Bunz on developing chimeric and oncolytic adenoviruses, as well as studying the effects of Tumor Treating Fields (TTFields) in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). At Yale, he will work under the mentorship of Dr. Markus Müschen to investigate the dual expression of SYK and ZAP70 proteins in Malignant B-cells.

Dawei Peng conducts in-depth research on the existing literature and latest developments in the field of optogenetics, particularly in relation to B-cell calcium oscillation and its importance in B-cell survival. By working on the design, optimization, and testing of these tools, he contributes to the creation of innovative solutions that could potentially inhibit B-cell malignancy and advance cancer research.

During my PhD at Cardiff University I developed novel bioinformatics methods to analyze nucleosome maps generated by MNase-digest sequencing in order to understand the roles of chromatin remodelers in controlling developmental expression programs through nucleosome positioning. Following my PhD I moved to the lab of Dr. Niklas Feldhahn at Imperial College London where I first became interested in hematological oncology research. Our work mapping DNA-damage and enhancer reprogramming in transformed B-cells helped to explain why lineage specific markers recurrently mutated in B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL). I also performed topology mapping to identify oncogenic enhancer co-option, uncovering the mechanisms of MECOM expression and function underlying the dismal prognosis of this subset of acute myeloid leukemia patients. To further my interest in computational hematology-oncology I joined the lab of Dr. Markus Müschen in 2019 working alongside bench scientists to identify novel therapeutic vulnerabilities of B-cell malignancies. Through integrative analysis of clinical, transcriptional, proteomic and phosphoproteomics data in B-ALL and mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) models I helped uncover an unexpected mechanism of lipid-raft formation leading to PI3K amplification loop downstream of the B-cell receptor. Working alongside Dr. Lai Chan, my identification of mutational segregation between patient cohorts with STAT5- and ERK-pathway driven B-ALL helped lead to the development of a concept of oncogene convergence. This work showed that convergence on a single oncogenic driver was essential for development of B-ALL, and that activation of divergent pathways subverts oncogenesis. This convergence theory gives rise to the exciting possibility of combining divergent pathway activation synergistically with principal driver inhibition as a novel therapeutic strategy. By extending this analysis to study all major oncogenic pathways pan-cancer I now aim to identify whether oncogenic convergence is unique to B-ALL, or whether it represents a new hallmark of cancer that can be exploited to design personalized combination therapies.

Ruoyi Shi is an undergraduate of Zhejiang University majoring in Biological Sciences. She joined the Müschen Lab in July 2024 and is mentored by Zhangliang. Ruoyi is currently looking forward to comprehending the role of MYC and BCL6 dynamics by probing B-cell development under different expression patterns utilizing optogenetic systems.

Ruifeng graduated from Xiamen University in 2020 with a B.S. degree in Biological Sciences. In the sophomore summer, he had his first research experience in autophagy. He then joined an immunology lab studying B cell central tolerance at Xiamen University. His interest in hematological malignancy was piqued when he did his graduation project at Yale in Dr. Joao Pereira's lab, where he studied how B-ALL impacted B lymphopoiesis. Outside the lab, Ruifeng enjoys swimming, cooking and watching anime.

I completed my postdoctoral training at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory with Dr. Chris Vakoc and Dr. Jason Sheltzer. I focused mainly on the role of aneuploidy and genomic instability in cancer metastasis. Prior to that I graduated with my doctorate from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore where I focused on host-parasite behavioral manipulations. I am currently responsible for coordinating onboarding of new hire, overseeing efficient operational workflows and interfacing between the laboratory needs and administration.

Dr. Elise Wolf obtained her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of California, San Francisco in 2022. Under the mentorship of Jason Cyster, she described the role of GPR174 in regulating B cell activation and response. She spent a year as a postdoctoral scholar at the Innovative Genomics Institute in Berkeley, CA in David Nguyen's lab. At the IGI, she used CRISPR-Cas9 to introduce variants of unknown significance (VUS) from patients with hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) into primary human CD8+ T cells and characterize the effect on cellular cytotoxicity. Dr. Wolf matriculated to the Yale School of Medicine in 2023 and looks forward to a career as a physician-scientist. In the Müschen lab, she is using genome editing strategies to dissect migratory signaling pathways in B cells and how they are dysregulated in hematological malignancies.

Dr. Hong Zhou graduated from Zhejiang University in 2015 and has been engaged in research on the mechanism and drug resistance of anti-leukemia drugs. She joined the Müschen Lab in December 2024, the research project focused on lineage-specific vulnerabilities that are common in B-cells which represent a novel class of therapeutic oncogenic targets.

Tiffany Zhou is an undergraduate student in college Yale College studying Molecular, Cellular, Developmental Biology. She joined the Müschen Lab back in March of 2024. She is currently working under the STARS Summer Fellowship. Her project involves working MYC translocations and its sensitivity treatment.