Sept 2023- Perera lab at the AACR Special Conference on Pancreatic Cancer in Boston !
July/August 2023- Saying goodbye is hard to do :-( Fond Farewell to Miru and Alex as they move to awesome positions at Genentech and Calico respectively.
Summer 2023- Varsha Subramanyam joins the lab as a SRTP Amgen Scholar! Here’s Varsha presenting her summer project !
Varsha grew up in Cupertino, CA and moved to Los Angeles, where she currently attends the UCLA. She is a rising 4th year studying Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology. In the Perera Lab, Varsha is studying metabolism in PDAC cells. In her spare time, Varsha likes to go to music festivals and concerts, hike, and binge-watch any TV show on Netflix.
May 2023 - Perera Lab at the CSHL Mechanisms of Metabolic Signaling meeting. Congratulations Grace for winning a poster prize!
Jan 2023 - Rushika is awarded the AACR-MPM Oncology Charitable Foundation Transformative Cancer Research Grant (link)
Jan 2023 - Happy New Year !
Dec 2022 - Congratulations Miru on your award of a Hirshberg Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research Seed Grant !! (click here)
Sept 2022 - Celebrating the Perera Lab 7 year anniversary!
Sept 2022 - Farewell JJ and welcome to new postdoc Katie and lab tech Matthew
June 2022 - Paper accepted in Cancer Discovery (watch this space)
August 2022 - Miru and Yang present at the CSHL Mechanisms and Models of Cancer meeting
April 2022 - Grace passes her Qualifying Exam! Well done Grace!
June 2022 - Anthony’s Graduation Ceremony!
April 2022 - Raising awareness and funds for Pancreatic cancer research (Pancreatic Cancer Action Network Purple Stride)
Farewell to Suprit and Anthony ;-(
April 2021 - Grace’s review in Molecular Cell is out. Article here
Dec 2021 - Joint lab Christmas party !
Dec 2021 - Interview with Rushika published in Journal of Cell Biology (link to article)
Dec 2021 - Rushika’s Gunter Blobel Early Career Award Essay is published in Molecular Biology of Cell (pdf here)
Nov 2021 - November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness month! #wagehope #purplepower #WPCD
Anthony’s Thesis Defense! Celebrating the achievements of Dr. Anthony Venida at his thesis defense with family and friends!
Oct 2021 - Welcome to Callum Foakes who joins the lab as part of the Tetrad/University College London exchange program!
Sept 2021 - Rushika is awarded the American Society for Cell Biology Gunter Blobel Early Career Award ! (link)
July 2021 - Welcome to Isabelle Young who starts her rotation in the Perera lab!
July 2021 - Rushika is promoted to Associate Professor with tenure and we can finally celebrate our collective achievements all together with pancakes at House Perera!
Dec 2020 - Collaborative paper with the Zoncu lab at UC Berkeley on organelle homeostasis in Neimann-Pick Type C is out in Dev Cell (link)
Oct 2020 - Welcome 1st year Tetrad grad student Carla Espinoza who starts her rotation and new Perera Lab postdoc Gilles Rademaker !
July 2020 - Congrats to Anthony on an awesome score for his NIH Ruth L Kirschstein NRSA F31 grant!
July 2020 - Welcome 1st year BMS grad student Grace Hernandez who starts her rotation in the Perera Lab ! Welcome to JJ Hu our new brilliant Lab Tech!
July 2020 - Keeping our spirits up! Socially distant lunch at Golden Gate Park
Our current lab meetings !
June 2020 - Welcome Brandon DeSousa who starts his ‘virtual’ lab rotation in the Perera Lab!
April 2020 – Our collaborative paper with Alec Kimmelman lab at NYU is out in Nature ! “Autophagy promotes immune evasion of pancreatic cancer by degrading MHC-I” (paper link here)
see also news and views: “pancreatic cancer hidden in plain sight” here, research highlight in Cancer Discovery here
Spotlight by Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation here
March 2020 - Julian is awarded an National Science Foundation pre-doctoral fellowship! And is an incoming fall 2020 graduate student at UC Berkeley MCB program. CONGRATS JULIAN!
Paper accepted!
Feb 2020 – Celebrating the milestones! Revised paper resubmitted! Congrats to Anthony and Julian
June 2019 – Lots happening in June!
Perera lab attends the Gordon Research Conference on Pancreatic Disease. Anthony wins a prize for his poster presentation!
June 2019 – Christina gives her thesis defense and graduates - Congrats Dr. Adams!
June 2019 – Christina’s paper in eLife is out! “Transcriptional control of subtype switching ensures adaptation and growth of pancreatic cancer” (link)
June 2019 – Rushika presents on autophagy and lysosomes at the Cold Spring Harbor Labs workshop on Pancreatic Cancer
May 2019 – Perera lab at the PancWest symposia at Stanford! A wonderful meeting of pancreatic cancer researchers on the west coast.
Mar 2019 – Our perspective on the role of MiT/TFE transcription factors in cancer is out in Annual Reviews Cancer Biology. A great collaborative effort with Chiara di Malta and Andrea Ballabio from Tigem, Italy. (click here)
Mar 2019 – Welcome to new lab members Annelot Staes from Utrecht University, Netherlands and Thomas Itruarte!
Feb 2019 – Our Cell metabolism preview (here) of Poillet-Perez et al. (2018) is out!
Jan 2019 – Welcome to BMS students Daphne Superville and Brian Woo doing their winter rotation with us
Sept 2018 – Christina is awarded an NIH Ruth L Kirschstein National Research Service Award pre-doctoral fellowship! well done CA!
Mar 2019 – Our perspective on the role of MiT/TFE transcription factors in cancer is out in Annual Reviews Cancer Biology. A great collaborative effort with Chiara di Malta and Andrea Ballabio from Tigem, Italy. (click here)
Mar 2019 – Welcome to new lab members Annelot Staes from Utrecht University, Netherlands and Thomas Itruarte!
Feb 2019 – Our Cell metabolism preview (here) of Poillet-Perez et al. (2018) is out!
Jan 2019 – Welcome to BMS students Daphne Superville and Brian Woo doing their winter rotation with us
Sept 2018 – Christina is awarded an NIH Ruth L Kirschstein National Research Service Award pre-doctoral fellowship! well done CA!
July 2018 – Welcome to the Perera lab Julian Yano, Zeynep Cakir and Denna Kwang !
May 2018 – Welcome to Mauricio Flores (UC Riverside) who will conduct summer research in the Perera lab through the UCSF SRTP program.
April 2018 – Anthony passes his QUALS!! congratuations AV
December 2017 – Perera-Zoncu lab Christmas Party!
November 2017 – PANCREATIC CANCER AWARENESS MONTH kicks off with the PanCan PurpleStride Silicon Valley 5k run/walk
November 2017 – Suprit Gupta joins the Perera Lab - Welcome Suprit!
October 2017 – Anthony Venida wins best poster prize at the annual BMS retreat in Lake Tahoe !! yeeeeessss Anthony!
August 2017 – After a busy summer, SRTP student Megan Montoya presents her data from her time in the Perera Lab at the poster day.
July 2017 – BMS graduate student Anthony Venida joins the Perera Lab! Welcome Anthony.
June 18-24th 2017 – Christina presents a short talk at the Gordon Research Conference on Pancreatic Disease, Waterville Valley, New Hampshire. Congrats Christina!
June 2017 – Collaborative paper with the Ballabio lab on MiT/TFE transcription factor mediated activation of RagD in cancer cells is out in Science! (click here)
May 2017 – Welcome to undergraduate students Justine Rutter (Duke University) and Megan Montoya (University of Arizona) who will conduct summer research projects in the Perera lab.
April 30th 2017 – Awesome day of science at the Joint Metabolism Retreat between the Kajimura, Nomura, Olzmann, Perera and Zoncu labs
April 22nd 2017 – Perera Lab at March for Science SF
April 10th 2017 – Chris Waters - Tetrad grad program - starts his rotation! Welcome Chris!
March 2017 – Collaborative paper with the Zoncu lab on cholesterol mediated regulation of mTORC1 activity is out in Science! (click here)
March 2017 – Congratulations to Andrea and Anthony - recipients of NSF graduate research fellowships! Congrats to Austin for an honorable mention! Well done team!!
Jan 2017 – Austin Hsu and Anthony Venida start their rotations in the Perera lab - Welcome!!
Jan 2017 – Rushika is awarded the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award. See news highlight here
Oct 2016 – Rushika is awarded the NIH Director's New Innovator Award !!
See highlight in the UC (here) and UCSF campus news (here)
Congratulations to fellow UCSF awardees Bassem Al-Sady, Arun Wiita and Tien Peng
Oct 3rd 2016 – 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is award to Yoshinori Ohsumi for his discovery of the mechanisms and machinery controlling the conserved cellular quality control pathway known as Autophagy! (see here)
See and hear leaders in the field discuss this important recognition:
Oct 2016 – Our review in Annual Reviews in Cellular and Developmental Biology entitled "Lysosomes as a Regulator Hub" is out (click here)
Oct 2016 – Christina is selected for a short talk at the UCSF BMS retreat at Lake Tahoe
Sept 24th 2016 - Rushika speaks at the PancWest Symposia at University of California San Diego
Sept 22nd 2016 – Rally on Capital Hill to support budget increases for NIH and medical research
Sept 2016 : BMS grad student Jeremy Williams joins the lab for his 1st rotation
– ONE YEAR LAB ANNIVERSARY
August 2016 – Collaborative paper with the Kajimura and Debnath labs is out in Cell Metabolism!! See highlight in the UCSF news (here)
UCSF Pancreas Center News
July 2016 - Perera lab highlighted in the UCSF Pancreas Center Magazine (click here)
AACR-Pancreatic Cancer Action Network Career Development Award recipients Kian-Huat Lim, Chris Vakoc, Rushika Perera
April 2016 - We are in New Orleans for the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting! Rushika is awarded the AACR-Pancreatic Cancer Action Network Career Development award.
Click here for Career Development Awardees.
The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network: https://www.pancan.org
April 2016 – Andrea Eastes - BMS grad program - starts her rotation!
March 2016 - Rushika presents at the Banbury meeting on "Autophagy and Cancer" at Cold Spring Harbor (Banbury meetings click here)
Feb 2016 - Christina Adams - BMS graduate student and NSF predoctoral fellow joins the Perera Lab !!!!
Jan 2016 - HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Nov 2015 - Vancouver! Rushika visits the British Columbia Cancer Agency (BCCA) Cancer Center and the University of British Columbia to present her work on autophagy and metabolic reprogramming in pancreatic cancer. Link to BCCA Pancreas program: (Click Here)
LA Cancer Challenge for Pancreatic Cancer Research - Oct 24th 2015
September-October 2015 - the first packages arrive!
September 1st 2015 - PERERA LAB GRAND OPENING!!
July 2015 - Boston University, School of Medicine Cancer Center welcomes Rushika to present her work on autophagy regulation in pancreatic cancer at the Hematology/Oncology Grand Rounds Seminar Series.
June 2015 - Rushika is an invited speaker at the "Autophagy" Keystone Symposia, in Breckinridge CO to present her work on transcriptional control of autophagy in pancreatic cancer. (click here)
April 2015 - American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) selects Rushika as a NEXT GEN STAR at the annual meeting held in Philadelphia PA. She presented her work on transcriptional regulation of autophagy and lysosome biogenesis during the session "Pancreatic Cancer in 2015: An Integrated View of a Complex Disease" (click here)
January 2015 - Rushika presents a short talk at the "Integrating Metabolism and Tumor Biology" Keystone Symposia, in Vancouver Canada
Oct 2015 - The LA Cancer Challenge - the annual 5K/10K walk/run fundraiser for pancreatic cancer research begins! Rushika speaks about the lab's research along with other recipients of Hirshberg Foundation Seed Grants. (Agi Hirshberg pictured in angel costume).
Oct 2015 - The Hirshberg Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Seed Grant is awarded to the Perera Lab! (Click Here)
First delivery of lab equipment!
View from the lab!