Sarah A. Mazzilli, PhD

Assistant Professor, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine

Biography

Investigating the molecular events associated with the progression of premalignant squamous lung lesions for targeted chemoprevention.

Lung cancer kills more individuals in the United States annually than breast, colon and prostate cancers combined. Reduction of lung cancer mortality may be achieved by identification of those at the high risk of developing cancer, in addition to finding effective agents in which to intervene in the process. There has been limited success of candidate chemopreventive agents in lung cancer as most have selected based on work in pre-clinical models that do not adequately represent the precancerous and early stage lesions that are the focus in clinical chemoprevention trials for lung cancer. The interests of our laboratory involve developing models to aid in the understanding of the epithelial and immune modulations that are involved in the progression and regression of premalignant squamous lesions to frank lung squamous cell carcinoma with a particular focus on identifying and testing targeted agents on appropriate models that allow for translation to clinical intervention studies. To do this the our lab utilized novel single cell and multiplex imaging technologies to characterize the immune and epithelial alterations enabling lung carcinogenesis and study mechanisms to intercept this process. Our lab also works closely with members of the section of Computational Biomedicine as well as national and international collaborators on the Pre-Cancer Genome Atlas (PCGA) and the NCI- Human Tumor Atlas leading the effort to further understand the molecular underpinnings of lung cancer development to advance early detection and intervention.

Publications

  • Published 5/6/2026

    Anderson KE, Tran LM, Krysan K, Kefella Y, Yu L, Fishbein GA, Rodriguez EF, Shabihkhani M, Stefanko DP, Green E, Liu G, Liu H, Zhang S, Kane E, Mehrad M, Spira AE, Dubinett SM, Burks EJ, Mazzilli SA, Lenburg ME, Beane JE. Archetype analysis of lung adenocarcinoma premalignancy links heterogeneity in premalignant lesions to diverging features of invasive disease. Mol Cancer Res. 2026 May 06. PMID: 42089783.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 4/8/2026

    Xu L, Kefella Y, Zhang Y, Conrad RD, Anderson KE, Krysan K, Liu G, Kane E, Pennycuick A, Merrick DT, Janes SM, Reid ME, Burks EJ, Billatos E, Mazzilli SA, Kolachalama VB, Beane JE. Attention-based deep learning for analysis of pathology images and gene expression data in lung squamous premalignant lesions. Genome Med. 2026 Apr 08. PMID: 41952176.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 4/2/2026

    Ning B, Chiu DJ, Pfefferkorn RM, Cullinane E, Kefella Y, Kane E, Reyes-Ortiz V, Liu G, Zhang X, Liu H, Sultan L, Green E, Constant M, Spira AE, Campbell JD, Reid ME, Varelas X, Burks EJ, Lenburg ME, Mazzilli SA, Beane JE. Upregulation of an Epithelial miRNA Is Associated with Immune Evasion in Progressive Bronchial Premalignant Lesions. Cancer Immunol Res. 2026 Apr 02; 14(4):689-707. PMID: 41670462.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 3/24/2026

    Steiner D, Sultan L, Sullivan T, Liu H, Xiao X, LeClerc A, Melvin S, Alekseyev YO, Liu G, Mazzilli SA, Zhang J, Suzuki K, Rieger-Christ K, Burks EJ, Beane J, Lenburg ME. Vascular invasion-associated gene expression is detectable in pre-surgical biopsies of stage I lung adenocarcinoma. Nat Commun. 2026 Mar 24; 17(1). PMID: 41876493.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 1/18/2026

    Xi ZH, Koga Y, McDermott S, Kane EE, Pfefferkorn R, Billatos E, Hosking PR, Beane JE, Burks EJ, Mazzilli SA, Suzuki K, Campbell JD. Multimodal single-cell and spatial profiling reveals altered T cell-mediated immunity and B-cell follicular architecture in non-metastatic lymph nodes of patients with aggressive non-small cell lung cancer. medRxiv. 2026 Jan 18. PMID: 41646724.

    Read at: PubMed

View All 40 Publications:   View Full Profile in BUMC

Other Positions

  • Member, Genome Science Institute
    Boston University
  • Member, BU-BMC Cancer Center
    Boston University
  • Member, Evans Center for Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research
    Boston University

Websites

Education

  • University at Buffalo, PhD
  • University at Buffalo, MS
  • Bridgewater State University, BS

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