Welcome to Karen Mann's Lab Page

Our research aims to define and dissect new targetable events promoting cancer progression and metastasis that arise from deregulated transcription and RNA processing. We study these processes in pancreatic cancer, a highly metastatic, therapy-refractory and recurrent cancer. Using Sleeping Beauty (SB) insertional mutagenesis as a gene discovery tool, we identified transcription factors and RNA binding proteins that are functionally deregulated in human patients through non-mutational mechanisms during cancer progression. We employ genetic, pharmacologic, sequencing, proteomics and computational approaches to define novel cooperating events promoting metastasis and disease recurrence. We have established ex vivo and in vivo models to delineate the biological context in which these proteins are deregulated. The goal of our research is to identify signaling nodes and key drivers with therapeutic potential to better treat cancer patients.