Leveraging vulnerabilities created by the cancer genome to identify safe and effective therapeutic strategies for cancer patients

Our Research Focus

In the Cancer Dependency Map project, we profile large panels of cell line models to capture the heterogeneity of human cancer and link the molecular and genetic alterations of the tumors to their dependencies. Within the TDA laboratory we:

Apply new functional genomics approaches and technologies to identify new ways to map vulnerabilities at scale.

Develop experimental and computational strategies to prioritize therapeutic targets from DepMap datasets.

Investigate the molecular basis of the dependencies and triage targets to drug discovery pipelines.

Our Team

We are a multi-disciplinary team that embraces different perspectives and talents to accomplish common goals.

Francisca Vazquez

TDA Group leader, Director DepMap

Kelly Sullivan

Principal Alliance Manager

Samantha Stokes

Program Manager

Kirsty Wienand

Scientific Lead

James Neiswender

Target Discovery Project Lead

Lisa Brenan

Target Discovery Project Lead

Pratik Singh

Target Discovery Project Lead

Tsukasa Shibue

Target Advancement Project Lead

Patricia Borck

Target Advancement Project Lead

Barbara De Kegel

Computational Biologist

Melissa Sadir

Data Analytics Manager

Daniel Venooker

Project Manager

Chyna Betts

Senior Operations Specialist

Isha Lokurkar

Project Manager

Mike Kanare

Operations Specialist

Andrew Tuttle

Research Associate

Evan Lenz

Research Associate

Yuqi Chen

Research Associate

Daniel Lubicki

Research Associate

Hannah Shadmany

Research Associate

Matias Enriquez

Research Associate

Konnor Yunghans

Research Associate

Anisah Adeagbo

Research Associate

Nusrat Islam

Research Associate

Louie Hager

Research Associate

Esther Olajide

Research Associate

William DeSilva

Research Associate

Simon Kangoun

Research Associate

Nora Shanks

Research Associate

Alumni

Gabriel Mesa

Research Associate

Mike Burger

Computational Scientist

Ashir Borah

Computational Associate

Edmond Chan

Post Doc

Harry Liang

Research Associate

Daniel Bondeson

Research Scientist

Tate Bertea

Research Associate

Linh (Mylinh) He

Research Associate

Brent Paolella

Target Advancement Project Lead

Sara Wie

Research Associate

Nolan Bick

Research Associate

Jenny Serra-Vinardell

Target Discovery Project Lead

Alina Simerzin

Target Advancement Project Lead

Alvin Qin

Computational Biologist

Lisa Cervia

Post Doc

Jason Kwon

Post Doc

Nia Lloyd

Research Associate

Megan Wong

Research Associate

Ashley Anderson

Research Associate

Zoe Posner

Research Associate

Anthony Lau

Research Associate

Maisha Chowdhury

Research Associate

Join Us

Publications

Selected publications

Are CRISPR Screens Providing the Next Generation of Therapeutic Targets?

Francisca Vazquez et al.
Cancer Research
2021-12-01

Predicting cell health phenotypes using image-based morphology profiling

Gregory P. Way et al.
Molecular Biology of the Cell
2021-04-01

Bridging the gap between cancer cell line models and tumours using gene expression data

Javad Noorbakhsh et al.
British Journal of Cancer
2021-03-01

Agreement between two large pan-cancer CRISPR-Cas9 gene dependency data sets

Joshua M. Dempster et al.
Nature Communications
2019-12-01

Genome-scale CRISPR-Cas9 screen identifies druggable dependencies in TP53 wild-type Ewing sarcoma

Björn Stolte et al.
Journal of Experimental Medicine
2018-07-01

Contact Us

Francisca Vazquez

Target Discovery Advancement Team
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
415 Main Street
Cambridge, MA 02142

vazquez@broadinstitute.org