Michele Markstein Receives Life Sciences Moment Fund Award

Biology Assistant Professor, Michele Markstein and Tony Ip, Professor in the Program in Medical Sciences at the UMass Worcester Medical School, have received an award from the UMass Life Sciences Moment Fund. The $150,000 award will be shared with Zhong Jiang, Professor of Pathology at UMass Worcester, and Nan Gao, Assistant Professor of Biology at Rutgers University. The team will perform small molecule screens in vivo using the model organism, Drosophila melanogaster, which they have engineered to grow intestinal tumors with human characteristics. Compounds that prevent the growth of these tumors will be tested and characterized in human organoid cultures and clinical samples, to initiate translation of their results from large-scale in vivo screens closer to human clinical applications.