Category: Lab News

Thrilling news for the lab as we’ve received official notification that our first R01-equivalent grant has been awarded by the National Institutes of Health!

Dr. Chaudhuri has been awarded this based on strong work from the lab and collaborators on NF1 malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor (MPNST) detection via cell-free DNA liquid biopsy.

Congratulations to our very own Bilge Gungore for being selected as a named Caltech SURF for 2021. She is officially the “Frederick W. Drury, Jr., SURF Fellow”. We are very proud of you Bilge!

We’re proud of our students, Noah Earland (MSTP student) and Irfan Alahi (Computer Science Phd student). Noah passed his Immunology qualifying exam and Irfan was selected for the Computer Science PhD student Honor Roll (awarded to top ~10%) for the 2nd year in a row!

Great times at our first in-person lab social in ~1.5 years – a barbecue at Babler State Park! This also doubled as a going-away party for Rummi Babbra and Haley Ellis who are both off to Heme Onc fellowship. Good luck to you both!

Kevin Chen was awarded a Blue Ribbon for his NIH TL1 poster on urine tumor DNA for MRD detection of muscle-invasive bladder cancer. Strong work!

Congrats to MSTP student Noah Earland and MD student Kevin Chen for having their stellar abstracts on liquid biopsy translational research accepted for oral presentations at the American Radium Society Annual Meeting in Hawaii! Excited for you guys!

We’re excited that our two translational research abstracts were accepted for presentation at the ASTRO Annual Meeting! Congratulations to Kevin Chen, Pradeep Chauhan, Rummi Babbra and Wenjia Feng for leading the charge on their abstract accepted for digital poster presentation. Congratulations to Noah Earland, Peter Harris, and our collaborators Ricardo Ramirez and Dr. Jose Zevallos […]

Huge congrats to the team led by Jeff Szymanski, Taylor Sundby and Paul Jones on our medRxiv publication! We analyzed cell-free DNA from NF1 patients and showed we could specifically distinguish patients with malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor sarcoma from those with its benign precursor lesion. A cool collaboration with the laboratories of Dr. Angie […]

We’re thrilled to welcome Bilge Gungoren and Aditee Prabhutendolkar, two bright Caltech undergraduates who will be joining us this summer through the Student Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) program.

Co-first-authors Bruna, Nadja & Wenjia made a splash in the cell-free DNA liquid biopsy literature with their paper entitled ctDNA MRD Detection and Personalized Oncogenomic Analysis in Oligometastatic Colorectal Cancer From Plasma and Urine! See also Bruna’s tweetorial. We’re proud of you guys for this strong work along with the rest of the team which […]

Congratulations to our team and collaborators for 6 abstracts accepted for presentation at the 2021 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting! Special congratulations to primary authors Bruna Pellini (former fellow, now an Attending at Moffitt), Kevin Chen (medical student), Pradeep Chauhan (staff scientist), Jeff Szymanski (bioinformaticist), Prathamesh Chati (undergraduate) and Maher lab instructor […]

We had a fun virtual holiday lab party this year! Played the game “Two lies and a truth”. The winners included Steven Hartman and Wenjia Feng. We learned so much about each other including some surprising hidden talents!

Join us on Tuesday, Dec 22, for a lecture on cell-free DNA analysis in cancer clinical trials.

A huge congratulations to the team led by Bruna, Nadja and Wenjia for their first-author manuscript just accepted to JCO Precision Oncology!

Congratulations to Irfan Alahi for passing his PhD qualifying exam in Computer Science and Engineering!

We are proud of Haley Ellis for matching today to Hematology-Oncology fellowship at Harvard Medical School/Dana Farber/Mass General Hospital. Congratulations on a job well done!

Our very own Dr. Ramandeep Babbra has matched into Hematology-Oncology fellowship at the University of Rochester. We are very proud of you Rummi!

Congratulations Prathamesh on your presentation at the Washington University Undergraduate Research Symposium! We are proud of you.

We had the pleasure to have Jeff Szymanski, our Division Bioinformaticist and close collaborator, present at the NIH Cell-Free DNA Interest Group. He presented research from our lab, collaborating with Dr. Angie Hirbe’s and Dr. Jack Shern’s groups. Nice talk!

Kevin Chen has been having quite the Year 2020! Enormous congrats to him for having his abstract selected for the Siteman Cancer Center Virtual Cancer Research Symposium, where he delivered a stellar oral presentation.

Please join me in congratulating our very own Dr. Bruna Pellini, for her presentation at the NIH Circulating Nucleic Acids/Liquid Biopsy Meeting. Strong work!

Congratulations to Prathamesh Chati, our prodigal undergraduate student! His abstract was accepted for an oral presentation at the Midstates Consortium Biology/Psychology Research Symposium. Impressive work Prathamesh!

An enormous congratulations to our team members including Bruna Pellini, Ramandeep Babbra, and Jeffrey Szymanski for giving stellar digital poster and oral presentations at the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting. Impressive and impactful work team!

Congratulations team on your Radiation Research Society talks and posters! Our lab claimed 2 out of the 4 virtual podium talks in the Early Cancer Detection Symposium (https://na.eventscloud.com/website/14445/rrsspeakers20). Congrats Kevin Chen and Paul Jones on your podium presentations! And Bruna’s abstract was selected for a poster presentation. Stellar work!

Congratulations Kevin Chen for kicking of the NIH Cell-Free Nucleic Acids/Liquid Biopsy Interest Group today with his WebEEx talk on urine cell-free DNA analysis in bladder cancer. Stellar work!

We’re excited to welcome Steven Hartman on-board as a Computational & Systems Biology graduate student rotating collaboratively between our lab and Dr. Christopher Maher’s laboratory. Welcome aboard!

Following a stellar rotation, we’re excited to welcome Noah aboard as our newest member of the lab! Noah is a a WashU MD/PhD (MSTP) student destined to do great things. Welcome to the Chaudhuri lab Noah!

Congratulations to Bruna, Nadja, Pradeep, Peter and Jeff for putting together a nice review article titled Emerging Roles of Urine-Based Tumor DNA Analysis in Bladder Cancer Management, published today in JCO Precision Oncology!

Impressive effort led by Pradeep in our lab, collaborating with Ha Dang in Chris Maher’s lab, and the clinical prowess of Russell Pachynski. In addition to Pradeep – Haley, Wenjia, Peter, Grace, Mark and Faridi contributed strongly to this nice manuscript showcasing our technology EnhanceAR-Seq for cell-free DNA analysis in metastatic prostate cancer, which identified […]

Great times were had at the Wash U Med Onc Fellowship virtual graduation! We’ll miss you Bruna, you’ve been an incredible lab member! Bruna is heading off to Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, where she’ll be focusing on treating thoracic malignancies. I know she’ll continue making waves in the translational precision oncology space. Stay […]

Congratulations to Irfan for being selected for the Honor Roll in Computer Science! He’s among the top 15% of graduate students as determined by the department’s faculty.

Congratulations Paul for delivering a stellar oral presentation at the Children’s Tumor Foundation Virtual NF meeting! Paul delivered one of a select number of invited platform presentations after his abstract was scored among the very top. He presented his research using liquid biopsy cell-free DNA analysis to classify and track disease in NF1 patients with […]

Congrats to Bruna Pellini for publishing her ASCO abstract, and to Pradeep Chauhan in collaboration with Dr. Chris Maher’s lab for presenting their work as a poster presentation! Pellini et al. | Maher et al.

Congratulations to Prathamesh, our stellar undergraduate student, who was selected as this year’s Moog Scholar from Washington University’s sophomore class!

Congratulations to Sid, primarily mentored by Dr. Sam Achilefu and co-mentored by Dr. Chaudhuri, for successfully defending his Masters thesis in Computer Science.

Huge congrats team! Jeff and Paul had their abstract selected for a coveted oral presentation at ASTRO 2020, while both Rummi and Bruna had their respective abstracts selected for digital poster presentation.

Congrats Bruna, Jeff, Re-I and Paul for publishing a nice review article on the role of circulating tumor DNA analysis in lung cancer management.

Kevin Chen, our stellar medical student, wowed us by being awarded both the TL1 Clinical Research Training Award and the RSNA Medical Student Research Award. He will be spending a year doing translational research in the lab while also pursuing a Masters in Clinical Research.

Congratulations to Pradeep Chauhan, Erik Storrs and Paul Jones for having their abstracts all selected for poster presentation at AACR!

Paul passed his PhD qualifying exam! We celebrated this and other major accomplishments (like paper submissions by Pradeep, Bruna, Erik and Abul) with an Indian buffet lunch at Rasoi.

We had a great time at our annual holiday party and white elephant gift exchange… and enjoyed some good cake!

Bruna did a great job presenting her research at the Annual Medical Oncology Fellows’ Symposium. Congrats!

We had a lab get-together to celebrate October & November birthdays, Erik’s rotation, Nadja’s impressive oral presentation at the Radiation Research Society annual meeting, and Pradeep’s, Abul’s & Erik’s successful showing at the MGI Cancer Genomics work-in-progress seminar.

Nadja did a stellar job in her 18-minute oral presentation at the Radiation Research Society annual meeting, which she delivered after her abstract was selected as among the highest-scoring. She also won the meeting’s travel award!

Congratulations to Paul, our stellar graduate student, who was accepted onto the NIH T32 graduate training grant!

We had a great time at the annual CBD retreat. Pradeep and Wenjia won a prestigious poster award (congrats!). Strong posters and presentations from lab members including Peter, Paul, Pradeep, Wenjia and Abul!!!

We had a great time celebrating our undergrads’ last week in lab with an impromptu lab lunch. We also had a get-together at Dr. Chaudhuri’s house … where we celebrated the lab’s 1 year birthday with a cake!

Good times were had for folks in town for Memorial Day! And doubled as a housewarming for Dr. Chaudhuri.

Congrats to Re-I, Kevin, Abul, Chanelle and Peter for publishing the lab’s first paper in “Molecular Diagnosis & Therapy” titled “Detection of Solid Tumor Molecular Residual Disease (MRD) Using Circulating Tumor DNA (ctDNA)”.