Lab News

We had a wonderful lab holiday party and Yankee Swap gift exchange. What a great way to celebrate!!!

Although he missed the meeting due to Covid illness, Dr. Chaudhuri made sure to stay in the loop virtually at the ASTRO 2022 Annual Conference.

Congratulations to MD/PhD student Noah Earland who delivered an incredible quick-pitch oral presentation at the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting. We are proud of you Noah!!

Happy Birthday to our brilliant staff scientist, Dr. Abul Usmani! We had a wonderful time celebrating it at our lab meeting with yummy cake.

Dr. Chaudhuri, pictured here with residents, delivered Grand Rounds at the Mayo Clinic Department of Radiation Oncology, where he was also invited as a Visiting Professor.

Truly proud of our summer undergraduate researchers! They did a phenomenal job this summer in the laboratory. Pictured here are Breanna, Andrew and Chloe. Not pictured: Lili, Sara and Prashanth. Congratulations to all!

We had a wonderful time at our summer lab picnic which was in Forest Park. A nice celebration for the laboratory, catered toward our hard-working undergraduate researchers!

Enormous congratulations to PSTP fellow, Dr. Nicholas Semenkovich, who was awarded a CGC poster award for his work on ovarian cancer single-cell genomics!

Congratulations to PhD student Erik Storrs who presented a lightning podium talk at the Cancer Genomics Consortium Annual Meeting on his pancreatic cancer single-cell genomics project!

Congratulations to our undergraduate researcher, Mark Qiao, who was accepted to his top-choice Masters of Data Science program, and will be matriculating at the University of Washington in Seattle in the fall!

Congratulations to Noah Earland who successfully presented his PhD thesis proposal to his thesis committee today!!

Congratulations to PhD student Paul Jones, who was highlighted in the Cancer Biology Trainee Corner by the Department of Radiation Oncology at WashU! https://radonc.wustl.edu/research/cancer-biology-research/trainee-corner/

Dr. Chaudhuri has been awarded the 2022 Michael Fry Research Award from the Radiation Research Society, which recognizes an individual early in their career who has made significant contributions in one or more areas of radiation oncology research.

We had a wonderful time at the Children’s Tumor Foundation Neurofibromatosis conference. Lab members Paul Jones and Jeff Szymanski were integral to the conference with Paul winning the Young Investigator Award. We also had the opportunity to spend time with our dear collaborators, Dr. Angela Hirbe, Dr. Jack Shern and Dr. Taylor Sundby, and their […]

Congratulations to Kevin Chen who has graduated from WashU with both a MD and a MSCI. We are incredibly proud of you, and excited that you decided to stay at WashU to complete your residency in Radiation Oncology!!

Undergraduate researcher and Amgen Scholar, Grace Smith, has decided to matriculate at Harvard Medical School in the fall. Congratulations!!

Dr. Pellini delivered an incredibly compelling talk to kick-off the ctDNA session, titled “ctDNA — Dawn of a New Era”, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting. We are proud of her, now leading her own clinical and research enterprise at the Moffitt Cancer Center!

We are incredibly proud that PhD student Paul Jones has been awarded the prestigious Children’s Tumor Foundation Young Investigator Award!!

We had a wonderful lab picnic at Queeny Park in lieu of lab meeting. Great times!!

Congratulations to Erik Storrs, Abul Usmani and Prathamesh Chati for leading a pre-print publication in medRxiv on pancreatic cancer single-cell genomics!!

Three Caltech students — Prashanth, Sarah and Shoonhsin — who were accepted into the prestigious Caltech SURF program. They will be joining us this summer for research.

We are proud of our PhD student Paul Jones for winning this prestigious award!

We are grateful for the invitation present at this symposium in Singapore on April 19.

We are extremely grateful to see public interest in our liquid biopsy research.

We are thrilled that Kevin will be staying here at WashU for his Radiation Oncology residency. Strong work as always!

Great opportunity for us to present our liquid biopsy research at the University of Illinois in Chicago Cancer Center!

Congratulations to Alex Shiang (medical student) and Pradeep Chauhan (staff scientist) for presenting at ASCO GU 2022!

Beautiful collaborative work with Dr. Aaron Newman’s lab at Stanford! We deeply profiled peripheral blood features to predict severe immunotherapy toxicity in melanoma patients.

What an opportunity! We presented our liquid biopsy research at the University of Chicago after receiving an invitation from the great Dr. Ralph Weichselbaum.

Huge congrats to Bruna! She led us to an impactful article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology!

Our annual lab holiday party went virtual this year! Thrilled for those who could make it and missed those who couldn’t. Productive year and more importantly we were all there for each other. 🙂

We had the opportunity to showcase our research and insight at the Hoosier Cancer Research Network!

Fun to get some nice stuff from Siteman Cancer Center right in time for the holidays!

We had quite the showing at the Siteman Cancer Center Research Symposium with a podium presentation by Dr. Pradeep Chauhan (Staff Scientist), and beautiful posters from Alex Shiang (medical student) and Noah Earland (MSTP student).

We had the opportunity to showcase some of our work to friends and colleagues at MGH!

We had a great time celebrating with a lab outing to Mission Taco!

We had the opportunity to present our precision liquid biopsy research at NYU!

Congratulations to medical student Kevin Chen for leading a fantastic effort diving into the world of commercial ctDNA assays for soid tumor MRD detection. It was fun putting this review article together with members of the laboratory, members of the Wash U ctDNA working group, and with former lab member Dr. Bruna Pellini (now at […]

Dr. Chaudhuri has been featured in the November issue of the Washington University Division of Physician Scientists Newsletter.

Dr. Chaudhuri was interviewed by the ASCO Post regarding his perspective on ctDNA to personalize treatment for oligometastatic cancer in the future.

ENT resident Dr. Ricardo Ramirez did a stellar job presenting his work (collaborating with MSTP student Noah Earland) on using surgical drain fluid as a liquid biopsy analyte for HPV+ head and neck cancer minimal residual disease, collaborative work between our lab and the laboratory of Dr. Jose Zevallos.

Medical student Kevin Chen did a stellar job presenting his poster at ASTRO. He presented on urine tumor DNA detection of muscle-invasive bladder cancer, work that he performed collaboratively with lab members Dr. Pradeep Chauhan, Dr. Rummi Babbra, Wenjia Feng, and Dr. Peter Harris.

Liquid biopsy research from the laboratory including work on NF1 MPNST detection, urine tumor DNA detection of bladder cancer, and the recently awarded NIH R35 award were featured in this nice article written in the Oncology Times!

Nice seeing Dr. Chaudhuri present work from the laboratory in an international venue, and discuss the future of ctDNA MRD with expert panelists from around the world.

Our laboratory is thrilled to celebrate two separate manuscripts published today in PLOS Medicine! One is by Dr. Jeff Szymanski, Dr. Taylor Sundby and colleagues, and features our expert co-corresponding authors Dr. Angela Hirbe and Dr. Jack Shern. The other is by Dr. Pradeep Chauhan, Kevin Chen, Dr. Rummi Babbra, Wenjia Fgeng and colleagues, and […]

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!