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Chiara Ambrogio is an Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Torino, Italy. She has worked extensively in the area of tumor initiation processes, translational cancer research, and pre-clinical evaluation of novel drugs for the treatment of lung cancer. After training with Mariano Barbacid at the CNIO (2009-2016) and Pasi Jänne at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (2016-2019), she established her Molecular Oncology Laboratory at the Molecular Biotechnology Center (MBC)-Department of Biotechnology and Health Sciences in 2020 (https://ambrogiolab.com). The research focus of her team is to characterize in vitro and in vivo molecular mechanisms defining KRAS oncogenic signaling and the mechanisms of resistance in lung cancer cells through the characterization of the KRAS signalosome, defined as the functional protein complex engaging KRAS and related effectors, modulators and adaptors at the cell membrane. Other on-going projects in the lab deal with mechanisms of resistance to KRAS G12C inhibitors, epigenetics in tumor initiating cells, in vivo studies to understand the relevance of RAF kinases localization in cancer cells, therapeutic vulnerabilities of specific KRAS isoforms, and PROTAC approaches to degrade KRAS.  

Ambrogio research group, Twitter: @AmbrogioLab  

Welcome to this exciting seminar!  

Host: Heidi Haikala 

Student host: Bassel Alsaed 

Selected publications: 

1) Ambrogio C*, Köhler J, Zhou ZW, Wang H, Paranal R, Li J, Capelletti M, Caffarra C, Li S, Lv Q, Gondi S, Hunter JC, Lu J, Chiarle R, Santamaría D, Westover KD, Jänne PA*. KRAS dimerization impacts MEK inhibitor sensitivity and oncogenic activity of mutant KRAS. Cell. 2018 Jan 4 

2) Mysore VP*, Zhou Z*, Ambrogio C*, Wang Q, Okoro J, Jänne PA, Westover KD, Shan Y, Shaw DE. Structural model of a Ras-Raf signalosome. Nat Struct Mol Biol. 2021 Oct;28(10):847-857. doi: 10.1038/s41594-021-00667-6. Epub 2021 Oct 8. *equally contributed. 

3) Ricciuti B, Son J, Okoro JJ, Wang X, Paranal R, Wang H, Eum Y, Lin M, Haikala HM, Li J, Xu Y, Alessi JV, Chhoeu C, Mira A, Patrucco E, Redig AJ, Köhler J, Richard E, Nokin MJ, Santamaria D, Gokhale PC, Awad MM, Jänne PA, Ambrogio C. Comparative analysis and isoform-specific therapeutic vulnerabilities of KRAS mutations in non-small cell lung cancer. Clinical Cancer Research, 2022 January.