Ann Lin is a Fulbright scholar from the United States who joined the Hybrid Technology Hub in August. Recently, she has graduated from Stony Brook University with a BS/BA degree in Biochemistry and Economics. The past two years, she has been conducting research in the lab of Dr. Jason Sheltzer at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. There, she used CRISPR/cas9 to study genes that correlate with death in cancer patients in the hopes of discovering cancer addictions. Her research has led us to uncover an issue with a previously reported cancer dependency, MELK. Using CRISPR/Cas9, they found that MELK is not a cancer addiction in multiple cancer types and that the drug in clinical trials targeting MELK kills cells in a MELK independent manner.
Ann's desire to develop better models for drug develop has brought her to the University of Oslo. Here, she hope to combine mass spectrometry technology, organoids, and organ-on-CHIP technology to create a pipeline to measure patient response to drugs. Currently at the Hybrid Technology Hub, Ann is developing different reporter systems for different signal transduction pathways that will be used to monitor organoid differentiation. Concurrently, she is working with Dr. Steven Wilson and Dr. Gareth Sullivan to work on developing the mass spectrometry/CHIP platform and differentiating organoids.
Select publications:
* Lin, A.*, Giuliano, C. J.*, Sayles, N. M. & Sheltzer, J. M. CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis invalidates a putative cancer dependency targeted in on-going clinical trials. eLife (2017). doi:10.7554/eLife.24179
* Giuliano, C. J.*, Lin, A.*, Smith, J. C., Palladino, A. C. & Sheltzer, J. M. MELK expression correlates with tumor mitotic activity but is not required for cancer growth. eLife (2018). doi:10.7554/eLife.32838 *cofirst author
Select awards and recognitions:
§ Fulbright Scholarship for Research at the University of Oslo, Norway (2018)
§ Sigma Xi Research Award (2018)
§ Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship (2017)
§ One of Her Campus’s 22 under 22 Most Inspiring Women in College (2017)