Assistant Professor
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department, School of Public Health
RESEARCH OVERVIEW
The Rebecca laboratory focuses on understanding genetic and non-genetic mechanisms of therapy resistance and metastasis leveraged by cancer cells, using acral lentiginous melanoma as a paradigm. Their particular focus is on stem cell-like tumor cell subpopulations of melanoma cells that “hijack” developmental signaling cassettes to drive transient metastatic and drug resistant cell states. Their studies encompass quantitative tools, genetic editing, molecular biology, in vivo patient-derived xenograft therapy trials and bioinformatic analyses to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of actionable vulnerabilities for stem cell-like subpopulations of cancer cells.
Cancer Biology | Cell Biology | Cellular Stress and Cell Signaling | Translational Research
Selected Publications
Jagirdar K, Portuallo ME, Wei M, Wilhide M, Bravo Narula JA, Robertson BM, Alicea GM, Aguh C, Xiao M, Godok T, Fingerman D, Brown GS, Herlyn M, Elad VM, Guo X, Toska E, Zabransky DJ, Wubbenhorst B, Nathanson KL, Kwatra S, Goyal Y, Ji H, Liu Q, Rebecca VW. ERK hyperactivation serves as a unified mechanism of escape in intrinsic and acquired CDK4/6 inhibitor resistance in acral lentiginous melanoma. Oncogene, 2024.
Liu J*, Rebecca VW*, Kossenkov AV, Connelly T, Liu Q, Gutierrez A, Xiao M, Li L, Zhang G, Samarkina A, Zayasbazan D, Zhang J, Cheng C, Wei Z, Alicea GM, Fukunaga-Kalabis M, Krepler C, Aza-Blanc P, Yang CC, Delvadia B, Tong C, Huang Y, Delvadia M, Morias AS, Sproesser K, Brafford P, Wang JX, Beqiri M, Somasundaram R, Vultur A, Hristova DM, Wu LW, Lu Y, Mills GB, Xu W, Karakousis GC, Xu X, Schuchter LM, Mitchell TC, Amaravadi RK, Kwong LN, Frederick DT, Boland GM, Salvino JM, Speicher DW, Flaherty KT, Ronai ZA, Herlyn M. Neural Crest-Like Stem Cell Transcriptome Analysis Identifies LPAR1 in Melanoma Progression and Therapy Resistance. Cancer Research, 2021. *Equal contribution
Jamerson T, Rebecca VW, Aguh C. Genetic characteristics and response to systemic therapies of acral lentiginous melanoma at a tertiary care center-a retrospective review. Journal of the National Medical Association, 2022.
Alicea GM, Rebecca VW. Un-Fair Skin: racial disparities in acral melanoma research. Nat Rev Cancer. 2022 Mar;22(3):127-128. doi: 10.1038/s41568-022-00443-8. PMID: 35075287; PMCID: PMC9844516.
Alicea GM, Rebecca VW. Emerging strategies to treat rare and intractable subtypes of melanoma. Pigment Cell & Melanoma Research, 2020.