Leonid A. Pobezinsky
Associate Professor of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, University of Massachusetts
Ph.D.: Cancer Research Center, Moscow, Russia
Postdoctoral Training: Experimental Immunology Branch, NCI/NIH
Research Interests
Our laboratory is interested in the molecular mechanisms that control differentiation and transformation programs within an organism. The immune system constantly undergoes differentiation and is prone to malignant transformation providing an excellent model to study these programs. Thus, the focus of the laboratory is to identify key regulators of genes that are critical for normal function and for tumorigenesis of the immune system. Recently, non-coding RNAs, miRNAs, have been shown to control expression of many genes at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels. Specifically, we would like to understand the function of tumor suppressive and oncogenic miRNAs that are expressed in the immune cells.