Denis Laboratory – Present Lab Members
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Fangnian Wang, M.D., Ph.D.
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Fangnian received his medical degree from Shihezi Medical College, Xinjiang, China and Ph.D. from Shanghai Medical University. He completed postdoctoral training with Dr. Mary R. Loeken of the Section on Developmental and Stem Cell Biology, at the Joslin Diabetes Center of Harvard Medical School, before he joined our lab as a postdoctoral fellow to study Brd2 phenotypes in mouse models. He is exceptionally talented in molecular cloning and the manipulation of murine embryonic stem cells, the construction of transgenic and knockout mice and the biochemistry of energy metabolism. He is currently investigating the hypothesis that B cell-restricted knockdown of Brd2 function in mice leads to immune deficiency, and whole body-knockdown leads to disruptions of energy balance. |
Wanda Blanton, M.D.
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Wanda received her undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Washington University, St. Louis, MO in 1997 and M.D. from the University of Kansas School of Medicine in 2002. She was an intern and resident at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis, from 2002 to 2005. She has received several prestigious awards, including membership in the Golden Key honor society and Alpha Epsilon Delta honor society, the Sterling Merit Scholarship, University of Kansas School of Medicine, and she was a Sarnoff fellow at Washington University, St. Louis. Wanda is presently a GI fellow and postdoctoral trainee in the Immunology Training Program at BU School of Medicine. She is testing the hypothesis that lentiviral vectors that overexpress Brd2 can expand the lymphoid lineage in mice, upon transduction of murine hematopoietic stem cells and the reintroduction of those cells into mice by stem cell transplant. These experiments will deepen our understanding of human immunodeficiency, autoimmunity and lymphoid malignancy. |
Anna Belkina, M.D.
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Anna is a graduate student in Cell and Molecular Biology Program. She received her medical degree summa cum laude in 2003 from the Russian State Medical University in Moscow and a master’s degree from Rockefeller University in New York City in 2007. She has conducted important and diverse work on the functions of p53, the leptin receptor and energy metabolism. Her project involves the use of mouse models of Brd2 knockdown associated with obesity and protection from insulin resistance and Brd2 constitutive expression associated with B cell malignancy. Most recently she has been investigating the role of signal transduction in the innate immune system, and the mechansisms behind how Brd2 deficiency can uncouple inflammatory signal transduction and transcription from insulin resistance in the context of obesity. |
Denis Laboratory – Former Lab Members
Hongsheng Liu, D.D.S.
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Hongsheng received his D.D.S. degree from Beijing Medical University, Beijing, China in 1997 and was Instructor and Pediatrician in the Department of Pediatrics there until 2002, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Peking University until 2005, when he joined Boston University. He is currently a graduate student in the BU School of Dental Medicine. |
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Anupama Sinha
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Anupama was educated at Banaras H. University, Varanasi, India and Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, AL. She joined the lab as a Research Associate in the Cancer Research Center at Boston University School of Medicine in 2001 and has been the lead author on several of our important papers describing transcriptional control of cyclin A. She was highly expert in all the advanced technologies we employ and was a driving force behind our productivity. |
Paul B. Romesser
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Paul was a second year medical student at Boston University School of Medicine. He completed his undergraduate degree at Boston University in 2006 in the prestigious University Professors Program and graduated magna cum laude in a field of his own design, “Proteomic Immunology”. He has conducted independent research in our lab since 2004 and is the recipient of numerous scientific awards, including a Cancer Research Summer Student Award, Commonwealth Scholar Award, University Professors Program of Boston University – Best Thesis Award, and research studentship awards from Alpha Omega Alpha and the American Cancer Society. He has presented his work at international meetings of the American Association for Cancer Research and at Keystone Conferences. He investigated the hypothesis that fundamental proteomic differences between lymphomic, mitogenically stimulated and resting B cells elucidate the mechanisms of lymphomagenesis and lymphoma progression. He was named to the highly prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute/NIH Scholar in Residence Program, and worked in the Staudt Lab on the NIH Campus in Bethesda, MD. He has since returned to BUSM to continue his medical training. |
