Current Lab Members
The Hirbe Lab is a passionate group of clinicians and scientists working collaboratively with many labs. We use our diverse talents to address a broad range of questions regarding sarcoma biology, especially as it relates to understanding MPNSTs and clinically relevant therapies. Read below to find out more about each person!
Xiao Zhang
Lab Manager
Beginning in 1997, I was doing research on the role of p53, and p16 in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) at Nanchang University in China. When I arrived at Washington University in 2000, I started working projects on neurodegeneration and cell migration. I then moved on to the Siteman Cancer Tissue Procurement core facility and collaborated with more than 100 cancer research groups. While there, we teamed up with the genomic institute of Washington University and I started collaborating with Dr. Angela Hirbe. Together I helped her study MPNSTs to better understand the pathogenesis and the biomarkers of the MPNSTs diagnosis and therapy. I've been with Dr. Hirbe's team since September 2016 as a Staff Scientist. My research interests are in the identified BetaIII-spectrin protien as a frequently mutated gene in human MPNSTs, whose function is critical for mouse MPNST growth in vivo and as a potential diagnostic and prognostic marker for MPNST development and progression.
Vanessa Eulo
Hematology/oncology fellow
The goal of my research is to create a comprehensive clinical and genomic database of information from patients with Malignant Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumors accessible to the entire MPNST research community. The hope is that this resource will foster collaboration, help to avoid duplication of efforts, and finally allow for a sample size with enough power to ask questions regarding prognostication and identification of therapeutic targets. This database will be used to perform both retrospective and prospective analyses regarding MPNSTs.
Additionally, I am interested in clinical trial development for soft tissue sarcomas based on the pre-clinical findings in the laboratory.
Abigail Godec
Research Technician
My research interests are focused on the genetic regulation of metastasis within the context of MPNSTs. Using the tools present in the Hirbe Lab, I endeavor to identify and explore interesting genetic targets and pathways relevant to driving the cancer to be most aggressive. I am also involved in building and creating research tools to ask more sophisticated questions about drug discovery.
Wenjing Qin
Graduate Student
My major focus during my visiting co-Ph.D. with Washington University in St. Louis is how TYK2 protein expression affects MPNST progression. We have found TYK2 can influence the proliferation and death of cell lines in vitro and in vivo. My laboratory in China, from which I am visiting, is the laboratory of Bu Xianzhang in Sun Yat-Sen University, School of Pharmacertical Sciences, Guangzhou. There I studied the inhibition of amyloid peptide through various compounds.
Overall my research interests are in the ways alterations in protein pathways affect disease progression and the targets for therapy from those pathways.
Xue-Liang Zhou
POst-Doctoral Fellow
At present, I am mainly engaged in the molecular mechanism of ATRX inhibition of Malignant Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumors. I hope to use ATRX to screen key proteins that regulate the invasion and metastasis of Malignant Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumors, and to describe the molecular roles and clinical significance of key proteins in MPNSTs. In previous studies, I mainly elaborated the role and molecular mechanisms of Notch signaling pathway in myocardial protection, myocardial fibrosis, and myocardial angiogenesis from the molecular, cellular, and animal levels. Additionally, I discussed the regulation and molecular mechanism of NSD2 in cardiac hypertrophy from the perspective of epigenetics.
Hillary Dietz
Clinical Resident
The goal of my research is to use retrospective studies to understand the natural progression and rate of metastasis in soft tissue sarcoma patients to aid in rational evidence based surveillance guidelines.
Additionally, I am interested in clinical trial development for soft tissue sarcomas based on the preclinical findings in the laborartory.
