Developmental Biology Program
The Anna-Katerina Hadjantonakis Lab
Research
Cancer is a condition arising when cells undergo an identity crisis. Understanding of how cells control their identity, and how they assemble into tissues with normal organization and function during embryonic development provides the essential blueprint for gaining insights into the fundamental biological processes that become deregulated in disease states such as cancer.
Our research focus and goals - how cells form tissues. We are interested in how cells become specialized, and how they collaborate at the population level to collectively build organs. Our focus is on the endoderm, the progenitor tissue that gives rise to respiratory and digestive tracts, and associated organs such as the lung, liver and pancreas. Our overarching goal is to understand how endodermal organs form - in time and space - from populations of uncommitted progenitor cells in the embryo.
Repair, replace, and regenerate. An aspiration is to develop knowledge that will facilitate future efforts to repair, replace or regenerate diseased or damaged tissues. Our research seeks to gain fundamental insights into the processes by which tissues and organs arrise in their native context - the embryo - and consequently, how these mechanisms can be contextually recapitulated or adapted. Furthermore, understanding the processes taking place during normal development paves the way for understanding the mechanisms of cancers in children and young adults (Developmental Oncology).
A multi-disciplinary approach bridging scales. We use mammalian embryo, embryo-derived stem cell, and organoid models, as experimentally tractable platforms for our studies. We have a history of applying cutting-edge high-resolution quantitative methods – from light microscopic imaging to single-cell genomics approaches - to investigate mechanisms driving: (1) the acquisition of cell states and fates leading to the emergence of an endoderm identity, (2) the plasticity and differentiation of endoderm cells and their neighbors, and, (3) the organization and growth of tissue as organs start to take shape from communities of cells.
Featured News
People
Anna-Katerina Hadjantonakis, PhD
Chair, Developmental Biology Program, SKI; Alfred P. Sloan Chair
- The Hadjantonakis laboratory studies pluripotency and cell fate specification, tissue patterning and morphogenesis, in mammalian embryos and stem cell-derived embryo models.
- PhD, Imperial College (London)
- hadjanta@mskcc.org
- Email Address
- 212-639-3159
- Office Phone
Members
Chair, Developmental Biology Program, SKI; Alfred P. Sloan Chair
Research Technician
Assistant to Chair
Senior Research Scientist
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Research Technician
Postdoctoral Research Fellow - joint with Dr. Eric Siggia at Rockefeller University
Research Assistant
Senior Research Scientist
Research Assistant
Lab Alumni
Graduate Student
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Administrative Assistant
Postdoctoral Research Scholar
Administrative Assistant
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Graduate Student
Postdoctoral Research Scholar - NYSTEM Training Award at the CSCB
Research Technician
Postdoctoral Research Fellow - joint with Dr. Eric Siggia at Rockefeller University
Senior Research Scientist
Graduate Student
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Research Technician
Research Fellow - joint with Dr. Jenny Nichols at Cambridge University
Visiting Research Fellow
Research Technician
Graduate Student
Research Technician
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Visiting Research Fellow
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Administrative Assistant
Graduate Research Assistant
Research Fellow – joint with Dr. Eric Siggia at Rockefeller University
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Research Technician
Graduate Student
Research Technician
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
