New Appointments: MBP Welcomes Three New Researchers
The Department of Medical Biophysics is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Kristin Hope, Associate Professor, Dr. Courtney Jones, Assistant Professor and Dr. Anastasia Tikhonova, Assistant Professor to the Department of Medical Biophysics.
We have provided a brief biography for each of them below.
Dr. Kristin Hope
Dr. Kristin Hope is a Senior Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network, and Associate Professor in the Dept. of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. She earned a Ph.D. Degree in Molecular Genetics from the University of Toronto. She then went on to a postdoctoral fellowship in Montreal, in the laboratory of Dr. Guy Sauvageau. Dr. Hope started her own laboratory at McMaster University in 2010 and she and her team moved to the University of Toronto in 2020.
Dr. Courtney Jones
Dr. Courtney Jones is a Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network, and Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. She received her doctorate from New York University in 2014 studying mechanisms of therapy resistance in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Dr. Jones continued her training as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Craig Jordan at the University of Colorado where she studied metabolic properties of leukemia stem cells (LSCs).
The overall goal of Dr. Jones and her team is to identify, characterize, and target metabolic vulnerabilities of LSCs in order to improve outcomes for patients with leukemia. To achieve this goal her lab uses primary leukemia specimens, patient-derived xenograft models, as well as mass spectrometry-based metabolomic and lipidomic analysis. The ultimate objective of the lab is to translate our laboratory findings into the clinic and understand clinical observations through laboratory studies.
Dr. Anastasia Tikhonova
Dr. Anastasia Tikhonova completed her dissertation research in the laboratory of Dr. Alfred Singer at the National Cancer Institute, as part of the NIH-University of Pennsylvania Graduate Partnership in Immunology (2007-2011). There, she became interested in how microenvironmental factors dictate cell fate choices. Dr. Tikhonova continued her training in the laboratory of Dr. Iannis Aifantis (New York University Medical School), where she identified niche factors that govern hematopoietic stem cell differentiation and leukemia progression (2012-2019). In 2020 Dr. Tikhonova joined Princess Margaret Cancer Centre as a Scientist and is an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto.
Please join the Department in welcoming Dr. Hope, Dr. Jones and Dr. Tikhonova to Medical Biophysics.