Alice Soragni, PhD

Dr. Alice Soragni's lab focuses on two major and overlapping areas of research. First, they investigate how protein aggregation affects cancer development and progression, with a special focus on p53 aggregation. They exploit protein aggregation as a therapeutic target by designing peptides that interfere with the process.

Second, and in parallel, the lab focuses on developing clinically-relevant organoid models for cancer biology, as well as drug discovery and development applications. In particular, they establish tumor organoids from surgical specimens (patient-derived tumor organoids) and perform high-throughput drug screenings to individualize cancer therapy to each patient.

Phan N, Hong JJ, Tofig B, Mapua M, Elashoff D, Moatamed NA, Huang J, Memarzadeh S, Damoiseaux R, Soragni A. A simple high-throughput approach identifies actionable drug sensitivities in patient-derived tumor organoids. Commun Biol. 2019 Feb 25;2:78. doi: 10.1038/s42003-019-0305-x. eCollection 2019.

Soragni A, Janzen DM, Johnson LM, Lindgren AG, Thai-Quynh Nguyen A, Tiourin E, Soriaga AB, Lu J, Jiang L, Faull KF, Pellegrini M, Memarzadeh S, Eisenberg DS. A Designed Inhibitor of p53 Aggregation Rescues p53 Tumor Suppression in Ovarian Carcinomas. Cancer Cell. 2016 Jan 11;29(1):90-103. doi: 10.1016/j.ccell.2015.12.002. Epub 2015 Dec 31.