Cancer Biology & Genetics Program

The Craig Thompson Lab

Research

Craig B. Thompson, MD

Benno C. Schmidt Chair of Cancer Research

The Thompson laboratory has proposed that the basis of metazoan cell survival is determined by the inability of cells to take up nutrients in a cell-autonomous fashion. This hypothesis was formulated to explain how multicellularity might have arisen during evolution. We believe the lack of a cell-intrinsic mechanism to regulate nutrient uptake provides the first and most fundamental barrier to cell transformation.

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Featured News

Dr. Craig Thompson in his lab at the Sloan Kettering Institute

New MSK Research Reveals How Mitochondria Function Under Stress Like Cancer

Mitochondria provide both the energy cells need to survive and the building blocks they need to grow and divide. Researchers at the Sloan Kettering Institute reveal for the first time how mitochondria choose between these opposing paths — and what implications it may have for cancer.

In the Lab

SKI cell biologists Junmei Yi and Xuejun Jiang

More Evidence that Cellular ‘Death by Iron’ Could Be Promising Avenue of Cancer Treatment

Cancers with certain mutations are vulnerable to ferroptosis, a form of iron-dependent cell death.

Research Published in Genes and Development from Craig Thompson Lab

New research from the Craig Thompson Lab offers a closer look at the transcriptional activators, Yap/Taz, and the role they play in cell growth and macropinocytosis.

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Publications Highlights

King, B., Araki, J., Palm, W., & Thompson, C. B. (2020). Yap/Taz promote the scavenging of extracellular nutrients through macropinocytosis. Genes & development, 10.1101/gad.340661.120. Advance online publication.

Vardhana, S. A., Hwee, M. A., Berisa, M., Wells, D. K., Yost, K. E., King, B., Smith, M., Herrera, P. S., Chang, H. Y., Satpathy, A. T., van den Brink, M., Cross, J. R., & Thompson, C. B. (2020). Impaired mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation limits the self-renewal of T cells exposed to persistent antigen. Nature immunology, 21(9), 1022–1033.

Schwörer, S., Berisa, M., Violante, S., Qin, W., Zhu, J., Hendrickson, R. C., Cross, J. R., & Thompson, C. B. (2020). Proline biosynthesis is a vent for TGFβ-induced mitochondrial redox stress. The EMBO journal, 39(8), e103334.

Li, A. M., Ducker, G. S., Li, Y., Seoane, J. A., Xiao, Y., Melemenidis, S., Zhou, Y., Liu, L., Vanharanta, S., Graves, E. E., Rankin, E. B., Curtis, C., Massagué, J., Rabinowitz, J. D., Thompson, C. B., & Ye, J. (2020). Metabolic Profiling Reveals a Dependency of Human Metastatic Breast Cancer on Mitochondrial Serine and One-Carbon Unit Metabolism. Molecular cancer research : MCR, 18(4), 599–611.

Zhu, J., Berisa, M., Schwörer, S., Qin, W., Cross, J. R., & Thompson, C. B. (2019). Transsulfuration Activity Can Support Cell Growth upon Extracellular Cysteine Limitation. Cell metabolism, 30(5), 865–876.e5.

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People

Craig B. Thompson, MD

Benno C. Schmidt Chair of Cancer Research

Craig Thompson studies molecular signaling pathways that regulate nutrient uptake and the role these pathways play in the regulation of cell growth and survival.
MD, University of Pennsylvania

thompsonc@mskcc.org: Email Address

Members

Tullia Lindsten

Laboratory Member

Shelby Brown

Research Technician

Ruobing Cui

Graduate Student

Ziad El Bakouny

Research Fellow

Tak Shun Fung

Research Fellow

Viktoria Gabor

Lab Administrative Assistant

Ji-Young Kim

Research Fellow

Dayi Li

Graduate Student

Alexandria Markovitz

Research Technician

Charles Ng

Research Fellow

Keunwoo Ryu

Postdoctoral fellow

Elias Tzoc-Pacheco

Research Tech

Raymond DeMatteo

Research Technician

Lydia Finley

Postdoctoral Fellow

Andrew Intlekofer

Postdoctoral Fellow

Gaspare La Rocca

Research Fellow

Scott Olejniczak

Research Fellow

Wilhelm Palm

Postdoctoral Fellow

Natasha Pavlova

Postdoctoral Fellow

Megan Radler

Research Technician

Santosha Vardhana

Postdoctoral Fellow

Sriram Venneti

Senior Research Associate

Jiangbin Ye

Research Fellow

Ji Zhang

Research Fellow

Leeza Menon

Lab Executive Assistant

Jaclyn Regan

Lab Executive Assistant

Chao Lu

Graduate Student

Patrick Ward

Graduate Student

Cory Benjamin

Research Technician

Heesun Cheong

Research Fellow

Jingwen (Zhou) Araki

Senior Research Technician

Agata (Aggie) Bielska

Postdoctoral fellow

Xin Cai

Postdoctoral fellow

Francesco Cimino

Research Technician

Madeline Hwee

Research Technician

Olivia Jones

Research Tech

Rachel Josselsohn

Research Technician

Bryan King

Postdoctoral Fellow

Yeon Ju Kyung

Research Technician

Victoria Macera

Research Technician

Juan Manuel Schvartzman

Postdoctoral fellow

Simon Schwörer

Postdoctoral Fellow

Open Positions

To learn more about available postdoctoral opportunities, please visit our Career Center

To learn more about compensation and benefits for postdoctoral researchers at MSK, please visit Resources for Postdocs

Get in Touch

thompsonc@mskcc.org

Lab Head Email
646-888-3285

Lab Phone
646-888-3010

Lab Fax

Disclosures

Members of the MSK Community often work with pharmaceutical, device, biotechnology, and life sciences companies, and other organizations outside of MSK, to find safe and effective cancer treatments, to improve patient care, and to educate the health care community. These activities outside of MSK further our mission, provide productive collaborations, and promote the practical application of scientific discoveries.

MSK requires doctors, faculty members, and leaders to report (“disclose”) the relationships and financial interests they have with external entities. As a commitment to transparency with our community, we make that information available to the public. Not all disclosed interests and relationships present conflicts of interest. MSK reviews all disclosed interests and relationships to assess whether a conflict of interest exists and whether formal COI management is needed.

Craig B. Thompson discloses the following relationships and financial interests:

Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation
Professional Services and Activities (Uncompensated)
Charles River Laboratories
Equity; Fiduciary Role / Position
Economic Club of New York
Fiduciary Role / Position
Elsevier
Intellectual Property Rights

Hakluyt & Company
Professional Services and Activities
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Professional Services and Activities
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Equity; Fiduciary Role / Position

The information published here is a complement to other publicly reported data and is for a specific annual disclosure period. There may be differences between information on this and other public sites as a result of different reporting periods and/or the various ways relationships and financial interests are categorized by organizations that publish such data.

This page and data include information for a specific MSK annual disclosure period (January 1, 2024 through disclosure submission in spring 2025). This data reflects interests that may or may not still exist. This data is updated annually.

Learn more about MSK’s COI policies here. For questions regarding MSK’s COI-related policies and procedures, email MSK’s Compliance Office at ecoi@mskcc.org.

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