Human Oncology & Pathogenesis Program

The Ross Levine Lab

Ross L. Levine, MD

Senior Vice President, Memorial Hospital, Translational Research

Professor

The goal of our research is to improve our understanding of the genetic basis of blood disorders known as myeloid malignancies, and to use this knowledge to improve therapies for patients with these disorders. Our efforts are focused on the identification and characterization of somatic mutations in hematologic malignancies using candidate gene, genome-wide, and functional approaches, with a specific interest in the role of aberrant signal transduction in malignant transformation and in the effects of mutations in epigenetic modifiers in myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML). As a physician-scientist, we have a specific interest in translating this knowledge back to the clinic, in the preclinical and clinical evaluation of targeted therapies for leukemia patients, and in the development of clinically tractable genomic assays for patients with hematologic malignancies.

Featured News

In the Lab

Memorial Sloan Kettering physician-scientists Samuel Bakhoum, Ross Levine, and Michel Sadelain

AACR 2021 Research Roundup: Chromosomal Instability, Early Changes in Blood Cancer, Revamping CAR T Cell Therapy

MSK researchers shared their latest research developments at the 2021 meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.

In the Lab

Single-Cell Study Sheds Light on Leukemia’s Family Tree

New research looks at how a series of mutations in normal blood cells can lead to them becoming cancerous and how these mutations accumulate as cancer progresses.

Finding

Researchers Ahmet Zehir and Elli Papaemmanouil talk while looking at a computer.

Why Do Certain Chemotherapies Increase the Likelihood of Blood Cancer?

New research focuses on clonal hematopoiesis, an age-related blood condition that increases the risk of blood cancer.

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Publications Highlights

Dunbar A.J., Bowman R.L., Park Y.C., O’Connor K., Izzo F., Myers R.M., Karzai A., Zaroogian Z., Kim W.J., Fernandez-Maestre I., Waarts M.R., Nazir A., Xiao W., Codilupi T., Brodsky M., Farina M., Cai L., Cai S.F., Wang B., An W., Yang J.L., Mowla S., Eisman S.E., Hanasoge Somasundara A.V., Glass J.L., Mishra T., Houston R., Guzzardi E., Martinez Benitez A.R., Viny A.D., Koche R.P., Meyer S.C., Landau D.A., Levine R.L. Jak2V617F Reversible Activation Shows Its Essential Requirement in Myeloproliferative Neoplasms. Cancer Discov. 2024 Jan 12. doi: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-22-0952. Epub ahead of print.

Stonestrom A.J., Menghrajani K.N., Devlin S.M., Franch-Expósito S., Ptashkin R.N., Patel S.Y., Spitzer B., Wu X., Jee J., Sánchez Vela P., Milbank J.H., Shah R.H., Mohanty A.S., Brannon A.R., Xiao W., Berger M.F., Mantha S., Levine R.L. High-risk and silent clonal hematopoietic genotypes in patients with nonhematologic cancer. Blood Adv. 2024 Feb 27;8(4):846-856. doi: 10.1182/bloodadvances.2023011262. PMCID: PMC10875331.

Perner F., Stein E.M., Wenge D.V., Singh S., Kim J., Apazidis A., Rahnamoun H., Anand D., Marinaccio C., Hatton C., Wen Y., Stone R.M., Schaller D., Mowla S., Xiao W., Gamlen H.A., Stonestrom A.J., Persaud S., Ener E., Cutler J.A., Doench J.G., McGeehan G.M., Volkamer A., Chodera J.D., Nowak R.P., Fischer E.S., Levine R.L., Armstrong S.A., Cai S.F. MEN1 mutations mediate clinical resistance to menin inhibition. Nature. 2023 Mar;615(7954):913-919. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-05755-9. Epub 2023 Mar 15. PMCID: PMC10157896.

Dunbar A.J., Kim D., Lu M., Farina M., Bowman R.L., Yang J.L., Park Y., Karzai A., Xiao W., Zaroogian Z., O’Connor K., Mowla S., Gobbo F., Verachi P., Martelli F., Sarli G., Xia L., Elmansy N., Kleppe M., Chen Z., Xiao Y., McGovern E., Snyder J., Krishnan A., Hill C., Cordner K., Zouak A., Salama M.E., Yohai J., Tucker E., Chen J., Zhou J., McConnell T., Migliaccio A.R., Koche R., Rampal R., Fan R., Levine R.L., Hoffman R. CXCL8/CXCR2 signaling mediates bone marrow fibrosis and is a therapeutic target in myelofibrosis. Blood. 2023 May 18;141(20):2508-2519. doi: 10.1182/blood.2022015418. PMCID: PMC10273167.

Miles L.A., Bowman R.L., Merlinsky T.R., Csete I.S., Ooi A.T., Durruthy-Durruthy R., Bowman M., Famulare C., Patel M.A., Mendez P., Ainali C., Demaree B., Delley C.L., Abate A.R., Manivannan M., Sahu S., Goldberg A.D., Bolton K.L., Zehir A., Rampal R., Carroll M.P., Meyer S.E., Viny A.D., Levine R.L. Single-cell mutation analysis of clonal evolution in myeloid malignancies. Nature. 2020 Nov;587(7834):477-482. doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2864-x. Epub 2020 Oct 28. PMCID: PMC7677169.

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People

Ross L. Levine, MD

Senior Vice President, Memorial Hospital, Translational Research

Professor

Mechanisms of genetic and epigenetic cooperativity which drive myeloid transformation; Elucidating and modeling evolution from hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells to clonal hematopoiesis and then to myeloid malignancies; Identification and credentialing novel therapeutic dependencies in myeloid malignancies
MD, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

[email protected]: Email Address
View physician profile: Physician profile

Members

Sheng Cai, MD, PhD — Sheng Cai
Assistant Attending

Maria Teresa Calvo-Fernandez
Research Lab Manager

Hannah Fay

Research Scholar

Inés Fernández Maestre
GSK Graduate Student

Amritha Varshini Hanasoge Somasundara
Senior Research Assistant

Mahak Kathpalia

Research Technician

Kaitlyn Ko

Research Technician

Raajit K. Rampal, MD, PhD — Raajit K. Rampal
Associate Attending

Merve Sahin

Data Scientist II

Pablo Sánchez Vela, MD — Pablo Sánchez Vela
Senior Research Scientist

Matthew Wereski

Research Assistant

Wenbin Xiao

Associate Attending

Lab Alumni

Alison Schram, BS — Alison Schram
Graduate Research Assistant

Anthony Martinez Benitez

Lab Technician

Neha Bhagwat
Associate Director, Translational Medicine at Prelude Therapeutics Inc., Wilmington, Delaware

Robert Bowman
Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

Stephanie Braunstein
Senior Research Technician

Sophia Chiu, MS — Sophia Chiu
Research Technician

Young Rock Chung

Research Technician

Keith Cordner

Research Technician

Lauren Dong

Research Technician

Andrew Dunbar, MD — Andrew Dunbar
Instructor, Department of Leukemia

Vidushi Durani

Research Technician

Emily Guzzardi

Lab Technician

Abdul Karzai

Senior Research Technician

Outi Kilpivaara

Research Fellow

Maria Kleppe

Research Fellow

Priya Koppikar, PhD — Priya Koppikar
Research Fellow

Aishwarya Krishnan
Senior Research Technician

Hiroyoshi Kunimoto, MD, PhD — Hiroyoshi Kunimoto
Research Fellow

Lindsay M. Saunders, BS — Lindsay M. LaFave (Saunders)
Research Fellow

Bing Li

Visiting Investigator

Anna Sophia McKenney
Interventional Radiology Resident at New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY

Linde Miles
Assistant Professor, University of Cincinnati

Tanmay Mishra

Senior Research Technician

Christine Mullane
Administrative Assistant

Abbas Nazir

Research Technician

Rosemary Neigenfind

Research Technician

Kavi O'Connor

Research Technician

Suveg Pandey, BS — Suveg Pandey
Research Technician

Friederike Pastore, MD — Friederike Pastore
Research Fellow

Jay Patel

Research Trainee

Franck Rapaport
Senior Research Scientist

Shira Redlich
Senior Research Technician

Angelica Romero-Vega

Research Technician

Alan Shih, MD, PhD — Alan Shih
Assistant Attending

Amritha Hanasoqe Somasundara

Research Technician

Aaron Stonestrom

Fellow

Pictured: Aaron Viny — Aaron Viny
Assistant Attending

Michael Waarts

GSK Graduate Student

Brittany A. Woods
Equity Research Associate at William Blair Cowen, Inc., New York, NY

Zachary Zaroogian

Research Technician

Anouar Zouak

Research Technician

Lab Affiliations

Achievements

Scholar, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Scholar (2012)
Louis and Allston Boyer Young Investigator Award for Basic Research, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (2011)
Member, American Society of Clinical Investigation (2011)
Sir William Osler Young Investigator Award, Interurban Clinical Club (2011)

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

Get in Touch

[email protected]

Lab Head Email
646-888-2796

Lab Phone

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.

Ross L. Levine discloses the following relationships and financial interests:

Ajax Therapeutics, Inc.
Equity; Fiduciary Role / Position; Intellectual Property Rights; Professional Services and Activities (Uncompensated)
Anovia Biosciences, Inc
Equity
Auron Therapeutics, Inc.
Equity; Professional Services and Activities (Uncompensated)
Bakx Therapeutics
Equity
C4 Therapeutics
Equity; Professional Services and Activities
Cure Breast Cancer Foundation
Intellectual Property Rights
ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group
Professional Services and Activities (Uncompensated)
Epiphanes, Inc.
Equity
Epizyme
Intellectual Property Rights
Genome Quebec
Professional Services and Activities
Goldman Sachs
Professional Services and Activities

Isoplexis Corporation
Equity; Professional Services and Activities (Uncompensated)
Jubilant Therapeutics Inc.
Professional Services and Activities
Kurome Therapeutics, Inc.
Equity; Professional Services and Activities
Mission Bio
Equity; Professional Services and Activities
Prelude Therapeutics
Equity; Professional Services and Activities (Uncompensated)
Qiagen
Equity; Fiduciary Role / Position; Professional Services and Activities (Uncompensated)
Scorpion Therapeutics, Inc.
Equity; Professional Services and Activities
Syndax
Equity
The Mark Foundation
Fiduciary Role / Position; Professional Services and Activities
Zentalis Pharmaceuticals
Equity; Professional Services and Activities (Uncompensated)

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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