Dana-Farber PLGA Program Director

Mimi Bandopadhyay, MBBS, PhD

Pratiti (Mimi) Bandopadhayay, MBBS, PhD

Mimi Bandopadhayay, MBBS, PhD is the Director of the PLGA Program at Dana-Farber.  She is a pediatric neuro-oncologist and scientist within the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at HMS, and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT.  Mimi applies integrative genomic approaches to identify targetable drivers of pediatric brain tumors and characterize resistance mechanisms.  In addition to her efforts in the lab, Mimi is a member of the clinical pediatric neuro-oncology team at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s, contributing to the care of children with brain tumors.

Dana-Farber PGLA Executive Committee

The five member Dana-Farber PLGA Executive Committee oversees with the Director the overall direction of the scientific program.

  • Scott A. Armstrong, MD, PhD, David G. Nathan Professor of Pediatrics, Pediatrics-Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School; Chair, Department of Pediatric Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
  • Daphne Haas-Kogan, MD, Radiation Oncology Professor at Harvard Medical School, Head of the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
  • Katherine E. Warren, MD, Member of the Faculty of Pediatrics, Pediatrics-Boston Children’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School; Director of Pediatric Neuro-Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
  • Michael J. Eck, MD, PhD, Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School and Department of Cancer Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
  • Rameen Beroukhim, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Medicine-Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School; Department of Cancer Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Researchers

Nathalie Y.R. Agar, PhD

Nathalie Y.R. Agar, PhD is the founding Director of the Surgical Molecular Imaging Laboratory (SMIL) in the Department of Neurosurgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Associate Professor of Neurosurgery and of Radiology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Agar’s multidisciplinary training includes a B.Sc. in Biochemistry, Ph.D. in Chemistry, and postdoctoral fellowships in Neurosurgery at McGill University, and BWH/HMS.

Mimi Bandopadhyay, MBBS, PhD

Pratiti (Mimi) Bandopadhayay, MBBS, PhD, is a pediatric neuro-oncologist and scientist within the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School, and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She completed her medical studies at Monash University and received her PhD at the University of Melbourne. She trained in pediatrics and hematology/oncology at the Royal Children’s Hospital and Monash Medical Center, Melbourne, and the Australasian College of Physicians, followed by further training in pediatric neuro-oncology at the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center and the Broad Institute. Mimi is a member of the clinical pediatric neuro-oncology team in the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center.

Rameen Beroukhim,
MD, PhD

Rameen Beroukhim, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, and an associate member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. In addition to directing a genomics-focused lab, he sees patients in an adult neuro-oncology clinic. Rameen studied physics and philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He obtained an MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge for work done at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Medical Biology on electron crystallographic studies of ion channels. He then completed his MD and internal medicine residency at the University of California, San Francisco, before completing a medical oncology fellowship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Sarah Buhrlage, PhD

Sara Buhrlage, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Harvard Medical School Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and Dana-Farber Department of Cancer Biology.  She received her PhD in chemistry from the University of Michigan. Following a post-doctoral position at Broad Institute, she joined DFCI’s medicinal chemistry core group where she collaborated with cancer biologists and clinicians to pharmacologically validate novel targets of disease in vitro and in vivo and to study mechanisms of disease and drug resistance.  She subsequently joined the faculty of the Dana-Farber Department of Cancer Biology where she pursues novel strategies for challenging drug targets.

Nika N. Danial, PhD

Nika Danial, PhD  is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Department of Cancer Biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She is Co-Director of the NCI-funded T32 Training Program in Cancer Chemical Biology and Metabolism at Dana-Farber. She received her PhD from Columbia University and trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Dana-Farber, where she studied mitochondrial apoptosis and identified a novel role for the BCL-2 family protein BAD in glucose metabolism. Her lab focuses on mechanisms and consequences of metabolic fuel choice in health and disease.

Michael J. Eck, MD, PhD

Michael Eck, MD, PhD is Harvard Medical School Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and Dana-Farber Department of Cancer Biology.  He received his MD and PhD in biochemistry from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and completed postdoctoral training in structural biology at the Boston Children’s Hospital and the Harvard Medical School.  His research focuses on the structure and regulation of tyrosine kinases in cancer and on structure-based approaches to discovery of novel inhibitors.

Eric Fischer, PhD

Eric Fischer, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Department of Cancer Biology.  He is Co-Director of the Center for Protein Degradation. Dr. Fischer trained in structural biology and biochemistry at the University of Basel and conducted his doctorate studies at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research. His lab focuses on the understanding of fundamental processes in ubiquitin signaling, and the molecular basis of ubiquitin ligase activity, targeting and regulation.  He seeks to leverage this understanding for the development of novel therapeutic approaches, such as targeted protein degradation.

Nathanael Gray, PhD

Nathanael Gray, PhD is the Nancy Lurie Marks Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Department of Cancer Biology. He is Co-Director of the Center for Protein Degradation. Dr. Gray trained in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Before coming to Boston, he was the Director of Biological Chemistry for the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation. At Dana-Farber he uses synthetic chemistry and functional small molecule discovery to modulate biological pathways important in cancer.

Daphne Haas-Kogan, MD

Daphne Haas-Kogan, MD

Daphne Haas-Kogan, MD is Chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital.  She is the Willem and Corrie Hees Family Professor of Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School. She received her M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco, and completed her residency in Radiation Oncology and post-doctoral fellowship in molecular neuro-oncology at UCSF.  Before coming to Boston she was a faculty member with joint appointments in Radiation Oncology and Neurological Surgery and was Vice-Chair for Research, and Educational Program Director at UCSF.

Keith Ligon, MD, PhD

Keith Ligon, MD, PhD is Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School with joint appointments at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Broad Institute, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). He is the Chief of Neuropathology at BWH/DFCI and the Director of the Center for Patient Derived Models (CPDM) at DFCI.  He attended medical school and received his PhD at the University of Texas-Houston Medical School and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.  Several of the methods he has developed in his research have been implemented in the clinical pathology lab to improve patient diagnosis. He has also led efforts to train neuropathologists in the utilization of genomic tests in practice and led genomically informed clinical trials development at the local and national consortium levels.

Rosalind A. Segal, MD, PhD

Rosalind Segal, MD, PhD is Harvard Medical School Professor of Neurobiology and Dana-Farber Department of Cancer Biology. She is HMS Dean for Graduate Education. She received her PhD from Rockefeller University and her MD from Cornell University Medical College, followed by a residency in the Harvard Neurology Program. As a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she investigated the role of nerve growth factors in regulating cerebellar development and tumor formation. At Dana-Farber her research is principally focused on nervous system development.