Andrew L Paek, PhD

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PO Box 210106
Building: Life Sciences South (#106)
Room #: 331
Biography
Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Medical School
Ph.D. Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Arizona
B.S. Applied Mathematics, University of Texas, Austin
B.S. Microbiology, University of Texas, Austin
Cancer Focus
We investigate how cancer cells sense, respond to stress, and ‘decide’ between transient or terminal fates. Our ultimate goal is to leverage this information to devise treatment strategies that selectively force cancer cells into terminal cell fates. We develop reporters of key players in the chemotherapy response and use live single-cell microscopy to measure the dynamics of these proteins after treatment. We found a link between heterogeneous activation of p53 and fractional killing of colon cancer cells after chemotherapy. We leveraged this information to design combination therapies that increase the fraction of apoptotic cells. We are continuing our work on p53 while also investigating the dynamics of the FOXO pathway.
Selected Publications
Y. Zhang, Huynh, J. M., Liu, G. - S., Ballweg, R., Aryeh, K. S., Paek, A. L., and Zhang, T., “Designing combination therapies with modeling chaperoned machine learning.”, PLoS Comput Biol, vol. 15, no. 9, p. e1007158, 2019. PMCID: PMC6733436 PMID: 31498788
S. Chakrabarti, Paek, A. L., Reyes, J., Lasick, K. A., Lahav, G., and Michor, F., “Hidden heterogeneity and circadian-controlled cell fate inferred from single cell lineages.”, Nat Commun, vol. 9, no. 1, p. 5372, 2018. PMCID: PMC6299096 PMID: 30560953
S. Islam, Paek, A. L., Hammer, M., Rangarajan, S., Ruijtenbeek, R., Cooke, L., Weterings, E., and Mahadevan, D., “Drug-induced aneuploidy and polyploidy is a mechanism of disease relapse in MYC/BCL2-addicted diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.”, Oncotarget, vol. 9, no. 89, pp. 35875-35890, 2018. PMCID: PMC6267596 PMID: 30542505
R. Ballweg, Paek, A. L., and Zhang, T., “A dynamical framework for complex fractional killing.”, Sci Rep, vol. 7, no. 1, p. 8002, 2017. PMCID: PMC5556027 PMID: 28808338
A. L. Paek, Liu, J. C., Loewer, A., Forrester, W. C., and Lahav, G., “Cell-to-Cell Variation in p53 Dynamics Leads to Fractional Killing.”, Cell, vol. 165, no. 3, pp. 631-42, 2016. PMCID: PMC5217463 PMID: 27062928