It was an eventful 2019, but it seems there were no posts about it! Perhaps that has something to do with the PI having a kid and going into survival mode with very little sleep for months on end?? That may be a reasonable hypothesis…
So, here’s a recap of some of the highlights of lab in 2019!
The lab received a nice grant! Andres was awarded a Hollis Brownstein New Investigator grant from the Leukemia Research Foundation. But Yumi was the real hero here! The basis of the grant is Yumi’s project, which used a chromatin-focused CRISPR/Cas9 sgRNA screen to identify epigenetic regulators of the differentiation block in acute myeloid leukemia cells. Way to go Yumi!
We had a fantastic Summer Undergraduate Internship Program (SUIP) student on board: Juan Mesa. Juan is an undergraduate at the City University of New York (CUNY) who was accepted into the SUIP at Penn for the summer of 2019. Juan performed a successful screen in AML cells and helped establish CRISPR activation (CRISPRa) methodology in the lab - wow, what a summer!
Speaking of summer interns, our star undergraduate summer intern from 2018, Josh Rico, graduated from the University of Ottawa in 2019 and then came back to the lab as a visiting research scholar. We’re thrilled to have him back! Josh is working on colorectal cancer organoid models, and is also taking the reins on optimizing the lab’s CRISPRa screening methodology. Welcome back, Josh!
The Blanco lab got its feet wet on the publication front! A few collaborative efforts came to fruition - Yumi co-authored a pancreatic cancer screening paper with Ben Stanger’s lab, and Andres continued his long-standing collaboration with the lab of friend and neighbor Rumela Chakrabarti, contributing some statistical and bioinformatics analyses to her latest (in press) breast cancer paper. The lab also put out a review paper on the intersection of metabolic and epigenetic programs in chromatin state regulation. Finally, under the “can you believe it” category, the last of Andres’ contributions to research in Yibin Kang’s lab as a graduate student featured in a 2019 Kang Lab paper on hysteresis in the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) program. That sure was a long time coming! But it’s a cool story that integrated mathematical modeling and cell fate experiments to understand how breast cancer cells can utilize a form of cellular “memory” to influence metastatic progression. If ODEs and EMTs mean anything to you, this one is up your alley! Check the Publications section for more info about these papers.
More rotation students! We had first year PSOM PhD student Derrick Rosario on board for his first rotation period in the fall. Derrick worked on some biochemical protein-protein interaction experiments, and was an all-around great guy to have in the lab.
Finally, we also had some fun lab outings and events. A highlight may have been our “Labsgiving,” which may be becoming an annual event. Blanco Lab members and other friends in the Department had a big potluck the day before Thanksgiving. Our group is very international, but our passion for science is universal, so we gave our thanks to the science powers that be and enjoyed a lot of yummy food!