Jason's Life in Science

Tewari Lab

October, 2009 to present

I am currently a post-doctoral researcher in Muneesh Tewari's lab at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA. We study the role of microRNAs in cancer progression and the use of microRNAs for cancer diagnosis. The lab was one of the first to discover that microRNAs are present in the circulation and not just within cells. Specific circulating microRNAs are detected in patients with cancer, indicating that circulating microRNAs could be used for cancer diagnosis and prognosis. My first project in the lab was to characterize these circulating microRNAs in healthy individuals. We found that many circulating microRNAs were associated with the Argonaute2 protein, which binds microRNAs in cells. Our work was published in PNAS.

Hahn Lab

August, 2003 - August, 2008

I did my graduate research at Harvard Medical School, in the BBS program. I worked in Bill Hahn's lab at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA. From the lab website you can find out a lot about what we worked on. My research focused on an enzyme called PP2A, which stands for protein phosphatase type 2A. We found that disruption of some forms of this enzyme contributes to cell transformation, which is the process in which normal cells are converted into cancerous cells. In my dissertation research, I identified novel proteins that interact with the PP2A enzyme and helped to determine the mechanism by which specific PP2A enzymes lead to altered cell growth and cell transformation.

Publications

For my complete CV, please contact me. You can find my publications on PubMed (well, it might also include any other JD Arroyo's, but for now, I'm the only one).