TIMOUR BASLAN
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New Bolton Center Kennett Square, PA
Emergencies & Appointments:
610-444-5800
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Ryan Hospital Philadelphia, PA
Emergencies:
215-746-8911
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215-746-8387
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TIMOUR BASLAN, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine

Research Areas: Cancer genetics and biology, sequencing and maths, method development
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The goal of our research group is to further an understanding of cancer genetics and biology in an effort to advance early-stage intervention/diagnostic tools as well as therapeutic targeting of cancer cells. To do so, we employ a multidisciplinary approach that integrates sequencing based computational method development and analytics (ex: long and short read sequencing, statistics, unsupervised learning/ML) with experimental perturbation approaches in cancer models systems (ex: shRNA, CRISPR, and chemical screens in in-vitro cell lines, organoids, and mouse models).

A particular emphasis of our group is on the role of an abundant, but overlooked, class of cancer driver alterations termed Copy Number Alterations (CNAs). Recent work for our group, and others, has shown that CNAs play a central role in disease initiation, progression (ex: metastasis) and therapeutic relapse. Our goal is to build on this work and expand it. Pancreatic and breast cancers as well as acute leukemias and sarcomas are areas of focus.

Central to the group’s approach to research is an emphasis on collaboration and cross-disciplinary investigation as well as attention to detail and curiosity.

Baslan, T., Morris, J. P. th, Zhao, Z., Reyes, J., Ho, Y. J., Tsanov, K. M., Bermeo, J., Tian, S., Zhang, S., Askan, G., Yavas, A., Lecomte, N., Erakky, A., Varghese, A. M., Zhang, A., Kendall, J., Ghiban, E., Chorbadjiev, L., Wu, J., Dimitrova, N., Chadalavada, K., Nanjangud, G. J., Bandlamudi, C., Gong, Y., Donoghue, M. T. A., Socci, N. D., Krasnitz, A., Notta, F., Leach, S. D., Iacobuzio-Donahue, C. A., Lowe, S. W. Ordered and deterministic cancer genome evolution after p53 loss Nature 608: 795-802, 2022.

Palmerola, K. L., Amrane, S., De Los Angeles, A., Xu, S., Wang, N., de Pinho, J., Zuccaro, M. V., Taglialatela, A., Massey, D. J., Turocy, J., Robles, A., Subbiah, A., Prosser, B., Lobo, R., Ciccia, A., Koren, A., Baslan, T., Egli, D. Replication stress impairs chromosome segregation and preimplantation development in human embryos Cell 185: 2988-3007 e20, 2022.

Maddipati, R., Norgard, R. J., Baslan, T., Rathi, K. S., Zhang, A., Saeid, A., Higashihara, T., Wu, F., Kumar, A., Annamalai, V., Bhattacharya, S., Raman, P., Adkisson, C. A., Pitarresi, J. R., Wengyn, M. D., Yamazoe, T., Li, J., Balli, D., LaRiviere, M. J., Ngo, T. C., Folkert, I. W., Millstein, I. D., Bermeo, J., Carpenter, E. L., McAuliffe, J. C., Oktay, M. H., Brekken, R. A., Lowe, S. W., Iacobuzio-Donahue, C. A., Notta, F., Stanger, B. Z. MYC levels regulate metastatic heterogeneity in pancreatic adenocarcinoma Cancer Discovery 12: 542-561, 2022.

Baslan, T., Kovaka, S., Sedlazeck, F. J., Zhang, Y., Wappel, R., Tian, S., Lowe, S. W., Goodwin, S., Schatz, M. C. High resolution copy number inference in cancer using short-molecule nanopore sequencing Nucleic Acids Research 49: e124, 2021.

Baslan, T., Kendall, J., Volyanskyy, K., McNamara, K., Cox, H., D'Italia, S., Ambrosio, F., Riggs, M., Rodgers, L., Leotta, A., Song, J., Mao, Y., Wu, J., Shah, R., Gularte-Merida, R., Chadalavada, K., Nanjangud, G., Varadan, V., Gordon, A., Curtis, C., Krasnitz, A., Dimitrova, N., Harris, L., Wigler, M., Hicks, J. Novel insights into breast cancer copy number genetic heterogeneity revealed by single-cell genome sequencing Elife 9: , 2020.

Baslan, T., Hicks, J. Unravelling biology and shifting paradigms in cancer with single-cell sequencing Nature Reviews: Cancer 17: 557-569, 2017.

Martelotto, L. G., Baslan, T., Kendall, J., Geyer, F. C., Burke, K. A., Spraggon, L., Piscuoglio, S., Chadalavada, K., Nanjangud, G., Ng, C. K., Moody, P., D'Italia, S., Rodgers, L., Cox, H., da Cruz Paula, A., Stepansky, A., Schizas, M., Wen, H. Y., King, T. A., Norton, L., Weigelt, B., Hicks, J. B., Reis-Filho, J. S. Whole-genome single-cell copy number profiling from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded samples Nature Medicine 23: 376-385, 2017.

Baslan, T., Kendall, J., Ward, B., Cox, H., Leotta, A., Rodgers, L., Riggs, M., D'Italia, S., Sun, G., Yong, M., Miskimen, K., Gilmore, H., Saborowski, M., Dimitrova, N., Krasnitz, A., Harris, L., Wigler, M., Hicks, J. Optimizing sparse sequencing of single cells for highly multiplex copy number profiling Genome Research 25: 714-24, 2015.

Baslan, T., Hicks, J. Single cell sequencing approaches for complex biological systems Curr Opin Genet Dev 26: 59-65, 2014.

Baslan, T., Kendall, J., Rodgers, L., Cox, H., Riggs, M., Stepansky, A., Troge, J., Ravi, K., Esposito, D., Lakshmi, B., Wigler, M., Navin, N., Hicks, J. Genome-wide copy number analysis of single cells Nature Protocols 7: 1024-41, 2012.

Ph.D. CSHL/Stony Brook University, 2014

MSKCC (2015 to 2023)
Cancer Biology and Genetics Program Fellowship