Spring & Summer 2020

April
Alice is interviewed in Cancer Discovery on funding challenges faced by early career cancer researchers in the time of COVID19
may / 1
Alice is interviewed in STAT News and comments on the exquisite challenges brought about by COVID19
may / 2
Alice is invited by the ALSF to present a Virtual Childhood Cancer Lecture on our pediatric sarcoma organoid work
June / 1
We are officially ramping up research starting from June 8th! We are all excited to be back in lab while working responsibly to minimize risk and keep everyone healthy. Lots of new amazing scientists have joined the lab over the past several months, including Sara Sartini, a postdoc who graduated from the University of Parma, William Ramirez, a master student from CSUDH, Peyton Tebon, a graduate student from the Department of Bioengineering, Kyle Roux, a second year DGSOM medical student, Thuy-Anh Bui, an SRP99 undergraduate researcher, Jomjit Chantharasamee, a visiting attending oncologist, Ahmad Al Shihabi, a project scientist and Bowen Wang, a graduate student in the Teitell Lab at UCLA that collaborates closely with us. Lexi Omholt, who spent the past couple of years as SRP99/199 in lab has now officially graduated and joined us to continue making strides in her project. Together with Huyen, Nasrin, David, Emily and Ardy, the lab is now 15-member strong!
JUNE / 2
And our second R01 is now officially funded!
JuNE / 3
We have a new paper published! Congratulations to Huyen on her peer reviewed methods paper that builds on our efforts to reproducibly screen tumor organoids with high-throughput.

Winter 2019/2020

October
Alice attended the second Scialog Meeting: Chemical Machinery of the Cell in Tucson, AZ, sponsored by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The lab receives a second grant sponsored by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to investigate novel strategies to perturb LLPS in cells.
DeceMBER
We receive our first grant for pediatric cancer research! The lab is awarded a one year, $200'000 grant to perform single cell sequencing of pediatric bone tumors coupled to organoid screening from the Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation
JANUARY / February
Alice gave talks at the Inaugural Precision Health Summit at UCLA, at CHLA, at Stanford and at the 27th International Molecular Med Tri-Con in San Francisco.
MARCH
COVID19 forces us to close the lab and move remotely, which we happily do in an effort to flatten the curve, slow down the spread of the virus and protect vulnerable individuals.

Spring & Summer 2019

May
Alice is invited to speak at the 9th Global Health Conference: Innovative research, Global Solutions meeting in Miami.
June / 1
After being selected as a 2019 ISSNAF/AR-TER Visiting Junior Scientist, Alice is invited to speak to several labs in Emilia Romagna, Italy, including the AUSL-IRCCS of Reggio Emilia and the University of Bologna.
June / 2
Alice serves as ad hoc member for the NIH MCT2 study section in Washington DC
June / 3
The lab is officially NIH funded!!
June / 4
Alice gives the Keynote lecture at the Symposium on High-throughput Screening Technologies at UPenn.
JULY / 1​
We are officially moving to the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at UCLA!

Winter 2018/2019

October / 1
Alice attended the Scialog Meeting: Chemical Machinery of the Cell in Tucson, AZ, sponsored by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the NIH.
October / 2
Huyen Nguyen-Thi-Lam joins the lab as a research associate as part of the student exchange program of the UCLA-DOE Center for Global Mentoring in collaboration with the Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City. Welcome!
NOVEMBER / December
Alice gave talks at the Joint Global Neurofibromatosis Conference in Paris France and the 2018 ASCB-EMBO Meeting in San Diego, California. The first highlighted our progress on developing organoid models of cutaneous neurofibromas and the second described our functional precision medicine approach to tailor therapy using sarcoma organoids. The ASCB-EMBO talk was highlighted in Science News
FEBRUARY / 1
The first paper from the lab is published in Communications Biology and was highlighted by the UCLA Newsroom!  Here you can read more about the pathway to publication: https://twitter.com/soragnilab/status/1100061857673490432
FEBRUARY / MARCH
Some more exciting news from the lab this month in addition to the paper published. Alice is invited to speak at the CSUDH Biology Department Series on March 14th and at the First Functional Precision Summit in Atlanta (GA) on March 30th. Our R01 focused on studying p53 aggregation in cancer received a fundable score. We say goodbye to Matt after a gap year in the lab as tech. Importantly, we will be hiring more soon, watch out for the announcements!

Spring & Summer 2018

April
Alice attends the 2018 AACR Meeting in Chicago
May
Alice presents the lab's first 1.5 year worth of work at CHOP in Philadelphia.
Great opportunity to visit many colleagues and friends at CHOP and at UPenn!
June
We published a feature article in Elife about leveraging preprint journal clubs as a tool to train early career scientists on peer review practices and to provide feedback to preprint authors
August / 1
A few exciting news to share: Alice was invited to give a talk to the Joint NF Conference as well as
​selected to discuss the sarcoma organoid project at the 2018 ASCB-EMBO Meeting in December.
Check out here for more upcoming conferences and abstracts 
AUGUST / 2
Alice is elected to the Board of the Society for Functional Precision Medicine!
The mission of the Society is to improve cancer patient care and outcomes by promoting
​and implementing functional assays into clinical care.
Learn more about the Society here:
September / 1
The lab is growing! We welcome Jason Sterrenberg, PhD, to the lab as our first postdoc as well as three new undergraduate researchers (SRP 99): Lexi, Emily and David.
September / 2
We are elated to receive an Iris Cantor-UCLA Executive Advisory Board/CTSI Pilot Award from the
​Iris Cantor-UCLA Women's Health Education & Research Center to support our efforts
in screening patient derived ovarian cancer organoids!

Winter 2017/2018

OCTOBER / 1
Alice attends the 2017 AACR Meeting: "Addressing Critical Questions in Ovarian Cancer Research and Treatment" in Pittsburgh
OCTOBER / 2
We are welcoming Jenny Hong to the lab! She is joining us as an assistant specialist to work on 3D neurofibromatosis models
OCTOBER / 3
Cynthia presents a poster on our Li-Fraumeni project during the 2017 DOM Research Day
October / 4
  • The lab is awarded a 2 year grant from the NTAP Foundation to investigate cutaneous neurofibroma and develop organoid models for biological characterization and, in the future, drug screenings
  • Alice attends the Cutaneous Neurofibroma Investigator Meeting in Baltimore on October 25-26th
NOVEMBER
Matthew Mapua is the last person joining the lab for this year. He is an assistant specialist and will investigate protein aggregation in cancer. With him we are at capacity for the time being!
February
The lab received a collaborative DGSOM Seed Planning Grant to assemble pilot data for our team sarcoma project. This work aims to leverage clinically the results of our high-throughput organoid screening method.
MARCH
We are awarded a Marsha Rivkin Pilot Study Award! This grant will fund a pilot project to investigate if p53 aggregation plays a role in the progression from a pre-malignant to malignant ovarian cancer.

Spring & Summer 2017

August
We welcome Cynthia who is joining our lab as a temporary volunteer - she will be with us for a couple of months and work on tumor prevention strategies for Li-Fraumeni patients
July
We say goodbye to Nhan after a productive stint in lab. He is headed back to Vietnam to finish his PhD
June / 2
The first manuscript from the lab is available on bioRxiv !
June / 1
Our first undergrad researcher, Tiffany, is joining the lab. She will investigate p53 aggregation in tumor models of head&neck cancer
April
Alice and Nhan attend the 2017 Annual AACR Meeting in Washington DC.

Winter 2016/2017

February
December / 2
december / 1
The lab officially opens on December 1st, 2016! We are located on the 5th floor of the MacDonald Research Building at UCLA
November / 1
Freda Zeng from the Andreeff lab (MD Anderson) will be presenting a collaborative project on ReACp53 targeting mutant and WT p53 & p73 in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) at the #ASH16 conference. 
Abstract #3944: "Targeting Aggregation of Wilde-Type p53 and Mutant p53 with ReACp53 As a Novel Therapeutic Concept for AML"
Date: Monday, December 5, 2016, 6:00 PM-8:00 PM, Session: 604
Abstract published in: Blood 2016 128:3944