Lab Members

Dr. Markus Müschen is the Arthur H. and Isabel Bunker Professor of Hematology, HHMI Faculty Scholar and was appointed Director of the Center of Molecular and Cellular Oncology at Yale in October 2020. He obtained his MD degree in Biochemistry with Helmut Sies (summa cum laude) from the Heinrich-Heine-Universität in Düsseldorf, completed his residency in Hematology-Oncology with Volker Diehl and his MD-PhD with Martin Krönke in Immunology at the University of Cologne, Germany. Since 2009, the Müschen laboratory has established new conceptual frameworks for the understanding of B-cell signaling and energy metabolism and how defects in these mechanisms contribute to autoimmunity and B-cell transformation. Influenced by his postdoctoral training in basic immunology (Klaus Rajewsky and Ralf Küppers) and cancer genetics (Janet D. Rowley), Dr. Müschen is particularly interested in signal transduction pathways that change the clinical trajectory of human B-cell malignancies and B-cell driven autoimmune diseases.

Irina graduated from D. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia with a B.Sc. in chemical technology, followed by M.Sc. in biotechnology at the Sechenov First Medical University of Russia. Both theses were devoted to metabolic engineering and editing bacterial cells to develop amino acids producer strains. After that, Irina received training in immunology and vaccine development and then got the opportunity to join Müschen lab as a postgraduate associate and gain skills, experience, and knowledge in B-cell cancer research.

Nader Atlasy Ph.D, is a Molecular Biologist who studies the complexity of the immune system in different contexts. During his doctoral studies in the lab of Prof. Henk Stunnenberg (promoter) and Dr. Joost Martens (co-promoter) at Radboud Institute for Molecular Life Sciences (RIMLS), the Netherlands, he applied cutting-edge technologies and bioinformatic approaches to investigate the whole transcriptome programs of the immune cells in the human small intestine and in Celiac disease where he characterized novel transcriptome signatures based on identification of different myeloid (sub)populations in the gut and established a comprehensive single-cell transcriptome atlas of immune cell compartment and further identified the underlying disease-related transcriptional programs of the cells. To gain more knowledge and training in the field of cancer immunology, he then joined the lab of Prof. Paul Coffer at Center for Molecular Medicine, Utrecht UMC, the Netherlands, where he studied the biology of regulatory T-cells (Treg) in human colorectal carcinomas (CRC). There he combined the single-cell transcriptome analysis and in vitro 3D co-culture system of human Tregs and CRC derived organoids and extensively studied the T-cell/cancer interactions to identify novel markers for development of target-based therapies. To further extend his knowledge and expertise in cancer immunobiology, he joined the lab of Prof. Markus Muschen, at Yale Center for Molecular and Cellular Oncology, Yale School of Medicine, to study the molecular programs and the mechanistic principles behind the human leukemia development.

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.

Annika completed her Bachelor of Science in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Oregon State University followed by a Master of Science in Molecular Biomedicine at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. Her master thesis revolved around the targeted degradation of the ETV6::RUNX1 fusion gene using HaloPROTAC3s in the context of pediatric B-ALL. Since joining the Müschen Lab, she has focused on developing iPSC-derived B-cell development models.

David graduated from Universidad Autónoma de Centro América with a B.A. in Medical Sciences (Summa Cum Laude) and finished the MD curriculum in Costa Rica. Currently, he works at the Müschen laboratory helping develop a model of B cell maturation.

Dr. Franz Ketzer received his BSc in Nutritional Sciences at Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Germany in 2016. He conducted his thesis on the effect of aluminum-nanoparticles on colon cancer cells supervised by Prof. Dr. Michael Glei, sparking his interest in cancer research. In 2018, he proceeded to complete the MSc curriculum in Molecular Medicine in Ulm, Germany, specializing in Molecular Oncology. During his MSc thesis, he studied the role of BLNK in the regulation of FOXO1 in B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, supervised by Prof. Dr. Thomas Wirth and Dr. Alexey Ushmorov at the Institute of Physiological Chemistry. As part of the International Graduate School for Molecular Medicine Ulm (IGradU), he subsequently completed his PhD work in the same group but shifted his focus to the role of CCND3 in the maintenance of B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. In 2022, he received his PhD (magna cum laude) in Molecular Medicine, after publishing his findings on the essential, anti-apoptotic role of CCND3 outside of its functions within the cell cycle in B- cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. In June 2022, he joined the Müschen laboratory at Yale as a postdoctoral associate, with a focus on signaling molecules downstream of the B-cell-/T-cell receptor in the etiology of hematopoietic malignancies and autoimmune disease.

Dhruv graduated with a BSc in Biotechnology & Business from the University of Waterloo in Canada. As part of the Müschen lab, he is focused on developing his knowledge and skills in the area of cancer biology, whilst applying his business knowledge in the development and commercialization of potential therapeutics. Outside of the lab, Dhruv enjoys running outdoors and playing the guitar.

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 Katz 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 an Associate 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 resident physician in the hematology & oncology branch of 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. In addition to his clinical work as a resident, Etienne is a member of the Center of Molecular and Cellular Oncology and studies B-cell dynamics and oncogenic signaling 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.

Sayeef is a clinical fellow in Hematology/Oncology at the Yale School of Medicine. He completed both BS/MD and BS/MPH accelerated tracks at the University of South Florida where he stayed for residency in internal medicine rotating through Tampa General Hospital, James A Haley VA Hospital, and Moffitt Cancer Center. During his chief residency, he served as the Director of Resident Research and served as an academic attending. He also completed coursework in the cancer biology PhD program at Moffitt Cancer Center where he advanced his research interests in transplant and cellular therapies.

Salim Oulghazi, MD, is a resident in the Department of Hematology/Oncology at Heidelberg University Hospital. He studied medicine in Frankfurt (Goethe University), Sydney (University of Sydney) and Cape Town (Stellenbosch University) with scholarships from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. While his time in medical school, he studied lymphocyte trafficking in a mouse model of autoimmune diabetes at the Institute of Transfusion Medicine and Immunohematology under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Halvard Bönig. After publishing his findings on VLA-4 as a target for primary prevention in autoimmune diabetes in 2020 he received his Dr. med. (summa cum laude) from Goethe University. In 2022, he joined the Müschen lab at Yale as a postdoctoral fellow of the Dr. Mildred Scheel Cancer Foundation to study negative regulation of Wnt signaling in lymphoid malignancies.

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.

Graduated from the University of Virginia in 2021 with a B.A in cognitive science and a concentration in computer science. During the course of my studies, I was an undergraduate research assistant in Dr. Anindya Dutta's lab under the Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics department of UVA's School of Medicine. Among a few other things, I helped develop an RShiny web-application that will serve as a screening tool to help discover novel genes that affect small-RNA targeting.

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.

Andrew graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a BS in Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics. He first arrived at Yale as a postgraduate associate with Dr. Carrie Lucas studying PI3K signaling in primary immunodeficiencies and is now an Immunobiology graduate student in the Müschen lab.

After graduating from the University of Tokyo with a BSc, Dr. Tomono received Ph.D. in Medical Sciences from the University of Tsukuba as an adult graduate student. After obtaining his Ph.D., he worked as a 1st postdoc in Schaffer's lab at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley). He joined Müschen's lab as s 2nd postdoc since August 2022. From his MSc to 1st postdoc, he researched mass purification method and capsid/viral genome engineering of adeno-associated viral vector (AAV vector) for the improvement of AAV gene therapy. In the Müschen lab, he studies the mechanism and function of Ca2+ oscillation of B cells.

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. Zhang received his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 2020 from Shanghai Institute for Biological Science, Chinese Academy of Science(CAS) and then joined Institute of Neuroscience of CAS to start his postdoctoral training in YANG HUI lab. His PhD training is focusing on liver cancer and postdoctoral training is focusing on CRISPR tools for disease therapy. From January 2022, Chang joined Müschen lab and decided to employ mouse genetics and the use of genome editing tools (CRISPR-Cas9) towards the development of pre-clinical models to investigate the mechanisms of B-cell development and leukemogenesis.