Lab Members

Raghu received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Kansas Medical Center and his M.D. degree from Brown University Medical School. Kalluri was a Post-doctoral fellow and a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and studied immunology and mechanisms associated with tissue injury and repair employing organ fibrosis as model system. In 1997, he moved to Harvard Medical School as an Assistant Professor of Medicine and as a faculty member in the Department of Medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. In 2006, Dr. Kalluri was appointed the Chief of the Division of Matrix Biology and was promoted to Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He held faculty appointments in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Harvard Stem Cell Institute in the division of nephrology of the Children’s Hospital Boston. Raghu was recruited to the MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2012 as a Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cancer Biology and the Director of the Metastasis Research Center. His laboratory is broadly interested in investigating the functional contribution of cell and tissue microenvironment, and Exosomes in cancer progression and metastasis.  

Administrators

Julienne Carstens, B.S., Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Julie received her Bachelors in Science from Louisiana Tech University in Molecular
and Cellular Biology in 2007. Julie completed her dissertation entitled “FGFR1, WNT, TGF-β, and SOX9 Collaborate in the Intricate Progression of Prostate Cancer” at Baylor College of Medicine in 2013, and joined the Kalluri lab as a postdoctoral fellow in 2013. Her research focuses on elucidating functional contribution of epithelial plasticity and tumor microenvironment in pancreatic cancer. 

Sara Che, B.Eng., Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Sara received her B.Eng. in Nanotechnology Engineering from the University of Waterloo in 2010, and her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Cornell University in 2016. She joined the Kalluri laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow in 2016 and her research focuses on the biology of exosomes and engineering exosomes for therapeutic use in aging associated diseases and cancer. 

Yang Chen, B.S., Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Yang received his Ph.D. degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 2014 and joined the Kalluri Laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow in 2014. His current research project focuses on the roles of investigating the functional heterogeneity of fibroblasts in health and disease with specific emphasis on pancreatic cancer progression and metastasis. Yang also employed novel mouse models to study tumor lymphangiogenesis and its contribution to lymphatic metastasis. 

Pedro Correa De Sampaio, B.S., Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Pedro received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2012, where
he developed a new 3-dimensional model for the study of tumor angiogenesis.
During his time in Cambridge he developed a keen interest in the tumor
microenvironment and the different cellular interactions that control cancer
progression. He joined the Kalluri laboratory at MD Anderson in 2012 to further pursue
his interest in cancer biology. Pedro is currently involved in the study of
mesenchymal cell populations in a pancreatic tumor microenvironment and their
role in the regulation of metastasis. He is additionally interested in the
biology of exosomes, and their role in cancer progression and metastasis. 

Janine Hensel, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Janine received her M.Sc. degree in Genetics and Molecular Biology from the RWTH Aachen, Germany, in 2008. For her master thesis she joined the Institute of Medical Biology in Singapore to study human neural stem cells and their potential for cell replacement therapies. In 2009, she began Ph.D. work as a Marie Curie fellow at the University of Bern, Switzerland. During her time in the Urology Research Laboratory at the University of Bern, she studied the contribution of tumor microenvironment in bone metastatic disease. In 2016, she joined the Kalluri laboratory as a Swiss National Science Postdoctoral fellow to pursue her research interest in mechanism of disease pathogenesis associated with pancreatic cancer and employing genetically engineered mouse models and engineered exosomes to study the functional role of Myc in pancreatic cancer.  

Sara Lovisa, B.S., M.S., Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Sara graduated with a M.Sc. degree in Medical Biotechnology from the University of Padua, Italy, in 2008. In 2012, she received her Ph.D. in Clinical Science and Technology from the University of Udine (Italy) and worked on mechanisms of cancer cell cycle deregulation in Dr. Baldassarre’s laboratory at CRO National Cancer Institute (Aviano, Italy).  Sara joined the Kalluri laboratory in 2013 as a postdoctoral fellow. Her research is focused on understanding the functional role and mechanism associated with epithelial- and endothelial-to-mesenchymal transition in organ fibrosis and cancer. Sara is also studying the functional contribution of type I collagen in organ fibrosis. 

Kate McAndrews, B.S., Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Kate received her B.S. from University of Nevada Reno in Chemical Engineering in 2010 and her PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in 2015. She joined the Kalluri lab as a postdoctoral fellow in 2015. Kate is investigating the mechanisms associated generation, release and uptake of exosomes by normal cells and cancer cells. Kate is employing siRNA and CRISPR screens coupled with 3D culture systems, novel transgenic mice, spheroids and organoids to identify novel pathways associated with creation of exosomes.

Lisa Becker, B.S., M.S.
Graduate Ph.D. Student

Lisa Becker received her Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology and her Master’s degree in Bioprocess Development from the Mannheim University of Applied Sciences (Germany) in 2012 and 2014. She joined the Kalluri Lab as a Ph.D. student in 2015. Her research interests include unraveling the functional contribution of carcinoma associated fibroblasts in metabolic rewiring of tumors and regulation of breast cancer progression and metastasis. 

Krishnan Mahadevan, B.S., M.D.
Graduate Ph.D. Student

Krishnan completed his M.D. from JIPMER, India in 2013. He worked as a clinical research fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital, HMS, Boston until 2015. He joined the Kalluri laboratory in 2016. His thesis goal is to understand the role of T-cells in pancreatic cancer progression and therapy response. 

Jena Tavormina, B.S.
Graduate Ph.D. Student

Jena graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Brown University in 2012 and worked as a research assistant at Boston Children's Hospital investigating pediatric retinal disorders with a focus on the long-term effects of retinopathy of prematurity. She joined UT Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in the summer of 2014 to begin working toward a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology and joined the Kalluri laboratory in 2015. Jena is investigating the mechanism of DNA accumulation in exosomes, identifying epigenetic changes in the exosomal DNA, and establishing its functional contribution to cancer progression. 

Michelle Kirtley, B.S., MPH.
Laboratory Manager and Research Investigator

Michelle graduated from Texas A&M University with a B.S. degree in Marine Biology and from Florida International University with a M.S. degree in Public Health. Prior to joining the Kalluri Lab in 2017, she worked at the University of Texas Medical Branch where she investigated virulence gene regulation, pathogenic mechanisms, and vaccine candidates for select agent pathogens. Currently, Michelle functions as the laboratory manager for the Kalluri Laboratory and handles reagent purchasing, oversight of the animal colonies, supervision of the laboratory related logistics, monitoring IACUC and IRB submissions and approvals and general laboratory maintenance. Additionally, Michelle participates and aids in several research projects as a research investigator.

Sujuan Yang, B.S., M.S.
Senior Research Assistant

Sujuan received her Master’s degree from Peking University in China in 2011 and joined the Kalluri laboratory as a research assistant in 2015. Her research interests include nucleic analysis of exosomes, engineering exosomes for treatment of pancreatic cancer and development of novel methods to utilize single cell sequencing in identifying novel mediators of pancreatic cancer. 

Dr. Jackie Parchem received her B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California Berkeley in 2004 and her M.D. from the University of California San Francisco in 2010.  She completed residency training in Obstetrics and Gynecology at UCSF in 2014.  She trained as Maternal-Fetal Medicine fellow at Baylor College of Medicine and currently is an attending physician in the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center. In 2015, Jackie joined the Kalluri lab as a Physician Scientist Research Fellow.  Her research interests include discovering the pathogenesis of preeclampsia and investigating the function of exosomes in pregnancy and fetal development. In 2017, Jackie was appointed as an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology/ Maternal-Fetal Medicine at UT Health. Jackie continues to conduct her research in the Kalluri Laboratory.