MEMBERS
Jason Sicklick, MD, FACS
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Jason Sicklick, MD, is an internationally recognized surgical oncologist who specializes in treating gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), abdominal/retroperitoneal sarcomas, and liver tumors (primary and metastatic).
Mark Antkowiak, MD
Mark Antkowiak, MD, is a resident physician in General Surgery and a current postdoctoral fellow. He received his MD at Northwestern University. He has extensive experience in bioinformatics, biochemistry, cell biology, and molecular biology. He currently studies the transcriptional profiles of GISTs through single cell and single nucleotide RNA sequencing data analysis.
Diwakar Guragain, PhD
Diwakar Guragain, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow who graduated in Medical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with research experience in the pathogenesis of cancer/chronic inflammatory diseases (colitis model) and anti-cancer/inflammatory drug discovery. He currently studies druggable target(s) in GIST.
Shashwath Malli, PhD
Shashwath Malli, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow. He received his Ph.D. working on Chromatin Epigenetics at SASTRA University, India. Followed by a postdoctoral stint in Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India understanding lipid methyltransferases from Mycobacterium. Currently he is elucidating molecular signaling pathways that can be druggable in SDH deficient GIST.
Manikandan Murugesan, PhD
Manikandan Murugesan, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow. He received his PhD in Biomedical Science from Bharathidasan University in Tamil Nadu, India. He engaged in deciphering the hypoxia regulation in breast cancer metastasis and chemoresistance employing cellular and genomic approaches. In April 2022, he joined the Dr. Sicklick lab, currently focusing on the molecular and functional features of succinate dehydrogenase deficient GIST.
Tannaz Ranjbarian, MD
Tannaz Ranjbarian, MD, is a postdoctoral fellow. She received her medical degree from Guilan University of Medical Sciences in 2018. During her two years in practice, she served as clinical director of two clinics in her country. As part of this time, she was also engaged in some clinical research. In the following years, she practiced as a physician in the Mehr-e-Taban clinic. As of July 2022, she began her postdoctoral fellowship in the medicine-gastroenterology basic science department at the UC San Diego biomedical research facility. Currently, she is engaged in clinical-based projects in Dr. Sicklick’s surgery lab and pursuing her clinical residency in this area.
Adrian Sanchez-Fernandez, PhD
Adrian Sanchez-Fernandez, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow with extensive experience in a broad range of biochemical, molecular, and cellular biology approaches. He received his PhD in Biology and Clinics of Cancer and Translational Medicine from the Cancer Research Center of Salamanca (Spain) in 2021. During the last years he has gained expertise in cell signaling pathways, genetic and pharmacologic targeting, biomarker discovery, in silico analyses, and transgenic mouse models for investigating the biology of cancer.
Ashwyn Sharma, MD
Ashwyn Sharma, MD, is a resident physician in General Surgery and a current postdoctoral fellow. He received his undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering before receiving his MD at Johns Hopkins University. He has experience in bioinformatics, genomics, and analysis of RNA sequencing data.
Chih-Min Tang, PhD
Chih-Min Tang, PhD, is a staff research associate trained in molecular biology. She received her PhD in Molecular Medicine from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in pharmacogenomics at the UC San Diego Department of Pharmacology. She has extensive experience in cellular and molecular biology, and genomics, as well as transgenic and xenograft animal models of GIST.
Leily Gordon
Leily Gordon, is a UC San Diego undergraduate pursuing a degree in molecular and cellular biology.
Chloe Miller
Chloe Miller, is a UC San Diego undergraduate pursuing a degree in human biology.
