Computational & Systems Biology Program

The Christina Leslie Lab

Research

Christina Leslie
Christina Leslie, PhD
Member, Computational & Systems Biology Program

Professor

Our lab develops novel computational methods to study cellular biological systems from a global and data-driven perspective. We seek to exploit diverse, high-throughput functional and genomic data to understand the molecular networks underlying fundamental cellular processes, including regulation of transcription, pre-mRNA processing, signaling, and post-transcriptional gene silencing. Our algorithmic methods draw on machine learning, a computational field concerned with learning accurate, predictive models from noisy and high-dimensional data.

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Leslie lab

Publications Highlights

CRISPR screening uncovers a central requirement for HHEX in pancreatic lineage commitment and plasticity restriction. Yang D, Cho H, Tayyebi Z, Shukla A, Luo R, Dixon G, Ursu V, Stransky S, Tremmel DM, Sackett SD, Koche R, Kaplan SJ, Li QV, Park J, Zhu Z, Rosen BP, Pulecio J, Shi ZD, Bram Y, Schwartz RE, Odorico JS, Sidoli S, Wright CV, Leslie CS, Huangfu D.Nat Cell Biol. 2022 Jul;24(7):1064-1076. doi: 10.1038/s41556-022-00946-4. Epub 2022 Jul 4.PMID: 35787684

Cytotoxic innate lymphoid cells sense cancer cell-expressed interleukin-15 to suppress human and murine malignancies. Kansler ER, Dadi S, Krishna C, Nixon BG, Stamatiades EG, Liu M, Kuo F, Zhang J, Zhang X, Capistrano K, Blum KA, Weiss K, Kedl RM, Cui G, Ikuta K, Chan TA, Leslie CS, Hakimi AA, Li MO.Nat Immunol. 2022 Jun;23(6):904-915. doi: 10.1038/s41590-022-01213-2. Epub 2022 May 26.PMID: 35618834

Globin vector regulatory elements are active in early hematopoietic progenitor cells. Cabriolu A, Odak A, Zamparo L, Yuan H, Leslie CS, Sadelain M.Mol Ther. 2022 Jun 1;30(6):2199-2209. doi: 10.1016/j.ymthe.2022.02.028. Epub 2022 Mar 2.PMID: 35247584 

Base editing sensor libraries for high-throughput engineering and functional analysis of cancer-associated single nucleotide variants. Sánchez-Rivera FJ, Diaz BJ, Kastenhuber ER, Schmidt H, Katti A, Kennedy M, Tem V, Ho YJ, Leibold J, Paffenholz SV, Barriga FM, Chu K, Goswami S, Wuest AN, Simon JM, Tsanov KM, Chakravarty D, Zhang H, Leslie CS, Lowe SW, Dow LE.Nat Biotechnol. 2022 Jun;40(6):862-873. doi: 10.1038/s41587-021-01172-3. Epub 2022 Feb 14.PMID: 35165384 

Programme of self-reactive innate-like T cell-mediated cancer immunity. Chou C, Zhang X, Krishna C, Nixon BG, Dadi S, Capistrano KJ, Kansler ER, Steele M, Han J, Shyu A, Zhang J, Stamatiades EG, Liu M, Li S, Do MH, Edwards C, Kang DS, Chen CT, Wei IH, Pappou EP, Weiser MR, Garcia-Aguilar J, Smith JJ, Leslie CS, Li MO.Nature. 2022 May;605(7908):139-145. doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-04632-1. Epub 2022 Apr 20.PMID: 35444279 

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People

Christina Leslie

Christina Leslie, PhD

Member, Computational & Systems Biology Program

Professor

  • Computational biologist Christina Leslie focuses on developing machine learning algorithms for computational and systems biology.
  • PhD, University of California, Berkeley
[email protected]
Email Address
646-888-2762
Office Phone

Members

Vianne Gao
Vianne Gao

Graduate Student

Alireza Karbalaghareh
Alireza Karbalaghareh

Research Associate

Erik Ladewig
Erik Ladewig

Research Associate

Qianzi Li

Graduate Student

Sneha Mitra

Research Scholar

Tae Yoon (Tyler) Park

Research Scholar

Preethi Periyakoil

Graduate Student

Allison Pine

Graduate Student

Viraj Rapolu

Graduate Student

Zakieh Tayyebi

Graduate Student

Rui Yang

Graduate Student

Vijay Yarlagadda

Graduate Student

Lab Alumni
Sagar Chhangawala
Sagar Chhangawala

Graduate Student

Hyunwoo Cho
Hyunwoo Cho

Graduate Student

Karen Chu
Karen Chu

Graduate Student

Rose  Diloreto
Rose Diloreto

Graduate Student

Lauren Fairchild

Graduate Student

Meghana Kshirsagar

Research Scholar

Yuheng Lu
Yuheng Lu

Graduate Student

Hatice Osmanbeyoglu
Hatice Osmanbeyoglu

Research Associate

Yuri Pritykin
Yuri Pritykin

Research Scholar

Merve Sahin

Research Fellow

Henri Schmidt
Henri Schmidt

Research Assistant

Han Yuan
Han Yuan

Graduate Student

Lee Zamparo

Research Scholar

Yi Zhong
Yi Zhong

Research Fellow

Lab Affiliations

Achievements

  • Introduction of string kernel methodology for SVM classification of biological sequences
  • Development of algorithms for predictive modeling of gene regulation
  • First systems-level analyses of competition between microRNAs and between target transcripts

Open Positions

To learn more about available postdoctoral opportunities, please visit our Career Center

To learn more about compensation and benefits for postdoctoral researchers at MSK, please visit Resources for Postdocs

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Disclosures

Doctors and faculty members often work with pharmaceutical, device, biotechnology, and life sciences companies, and other organizations outside of MSK, to find safe and effective cancer treatments, to improve patient care, and to educate the health care community.

MSK requires doctors and faculty members to report (“disclose”) the relationships and financial interests they have with external entities. As a commitment to transparency with our community, we make that information available to the public.

Christina Leslie discloses the following relationships and financial interests:

  • Episteme Prognostics
    Equity; Intellectual Property Rights

The information published here is a complement to other publicly reported data and is for a specific annual disclosure period. There may be differences between information on this and other public sites as a result of different reporting periods and/or the various ways relationships and financial interests are categorized by organizations that publish such data.


This page and data include information for a specific MSK annual disclosure period (January 1, 2023 through disclosure submission in spring 2024). This data reflects interests that may or may not still exist. This data is updated annually.

Learn more about MSK’s COI policies here. For questions regarding MSK’s COI-related policies and procedures, email MSK’s Compliance Office at [email protected].


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