Congratulations to Amrita Singh Chandhoke for receiving a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) post-doctoral fellowship! From the CIHR website: 
"The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) strives to ensure a strong foundation of future health research leaders, and is committed to offering programs that increase the supply of highly-qualified research personnel."

This is a highly competitive fellowship and we are all proud of Amrita's accomplishment. Amrita's project broadly aims to understand, using a quantitative chemoproteomics workflow, therapeutic resistance in pancreatic cancer. 

Congratulations to Morten for a successful Fulbright Scholar visit to the lab. During Morten's stay, he spearheaded a project to understand the role of selective autophagy under various stimuli and what are the selective autophagic cargo. During his stay he learned new quantitative proteomics techniques and made significant contributions to the lab. We will all miss him as he heads back to Norway to finish up his PhD. Best of luck Morten and congrats! (Left: Morten's going away lunch at Basho).

With support from a number of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Labs, the Hale Family Research Center, and with a grant to the Mancias Lab from the Friends of DFCI, a new Vevo 3100 Pre-clinical Ultrasound is now available for use for pre-clinical studies in pancreatic cancer (and other cancers). The Vevo 3100 ultrasound offers unparalleled ability to identify, measure, and track mouse pancreatic tumors during the course of genetic or pharmacologic experiments. This technology will prove invaluable for our studies with the ultimate goal of translating new therapies to patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. For more information on the Vevo 3100 ultrasound, click here.

As part of Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, the lab walks together to support Promises for Purple, a non-profit organization for pancreatic cancer awareness founded in 2009 by Claire Muollo, a Dana-Farber Cancer Institute pancreatic cancer patient who unfortunately lost her battle to pancreatic cancer in 2014. Her family and friends continue her legacy with annual Promises for Purple walks. 

Morten joins the lab as a visiting Graduate Student from University of Oslo as part of the Fulbright Scholar Program. Morten is currently a Graduate Student in the laboratory of Dr. Nikolai Engedal at the Centre for Molecular Medicine Norway.  In Dr. Engedal's lab, Morten has studied the Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) stess-induced autophagy as well as developed innovative methods to study autophagic flux. His Fulbright project in the Mancias lab will focus on the role of selective autophagy in the ER-stress response and its potential importance in pancreatic cancer biology.  His project will involve a combination of cell biology, quantiative autophagosome proteomics, and intensive bioinformatics. We're excited to have Morten in the lab!

Our first annual lab BBQ! Great food and fun was had by all as we celebrated our first year as a lab. Looking forward to many future BBQs filled with Ladder ball, Spikeball, and competitive watermelon seed spitting!