Molecular Pharmacology Program

The Karuna Ganesh Lab

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Research

Karuna Ganesh
Karuna Ganesh, MD, PhD
Assistant Member and Medical Oncologist

Assistant Professor

Metastasis causes >90% of cancer death.  The emergence, persistence, therapy resistance and lethality of metastatic cancer is driven by dynamic and tenacious metastasis stem cells (MetScs). The Ganesh lab focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms that underlie the emergence of regenerative plasticity during metastasis.  We employ cutting edge patient-derived organoid and mouse models of colorectal cancer, transcriptomic, epigenomic and single cell approaches, and mechanistic studies to: (1) elucidate how tumor invasion and dissemination induce phenotypic plasticity enabling the emergence of pro-metastatic regenerative traits (2) dissect the role of stromal cells, including immune cells, in promoting and constraining MetSC plasticity (3) define key signaling nodes that drive MetSC plasticity and develop therapeutic strategies for targeting such vulnerabilities and (4) collaborate with clinicians to understand mechanisms of therapy resistance in metastasis.

VIDEO | 02:22
Go inside the lab of Karuna Ganesh and learn what organoids are, what we can learn from them, and the potential impact they have for cancer patients.
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The Karuna Ganesh Lab

Featured News

Hear from three women breaking new ground in the fields of cancer metastasis, immunology and philanthropy.
Women in Cancer: Meet Three Trailblazers at MSK
Hear from three women breaking new ground in the fields of cancer metastasis, immunology and philanthropy.
Feature
Karuna Ganesh
The Convergence: Scientists Move toward a New Understanding of Metastatic Cancer
Through converging lines of research in stem cell biology, tissue regeneration, and immunity, Sloan Kettering Institute scientists are learning what makes metastatic cancer cells tick.
In the Lab
Graphical representation of cells leaking into bloodstream
What Does Cancer Metastasis Have to Do with Wound Healing? More than You Might Think
Scientists are learning that — in a literal sense — metastasis is wound healing gone wrong.

Publications Highlights

Moorman AR, Cambuli F, Benitez EK, Jiang Q, Xie Y, Mahmoud A, Lumish M, Hartner S, Balkaran S, Bermeo J, Asawa S, Firat C, Saxena A, Luthra A, Sgambati V, Luckett K, Wu F, Li Y, Yi Z, Masilionis I, Soares K, Pappou E, Yaeger R, Kingham P, Jarnagin W, Paty P, Weiser MR, Mazutis L, D’Angelica M, Shia J, Garcia-Aguilar J, Nawy T, Hollmann TJ, Chaligné R, Sanchez-Vega F, Sharma R, Pe’er D, Ganesh K. Progressive plasticity during colorectal cancer metastasis. bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2023 Aug 21:2023.08.18.553925. doi: 10.1101/2023.08.18.553925. PMID: 37662289; PMCID: PMC10473595.

Gerstberger S, Jiang Q, Ganesh K. Metastasis. Cell. 2023 Apr 13;186(8):1564-1579. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2023.03.003. PMID: 37059065; PMCID: PMC10511214.

Ganesh K. Uncoupling Metastasis from Tumorigenesis. N Engl J Med. 2023 Feb 16;388(7):657-659. doi: 10.1056/NEJMcibr2213497. PMID: 36791168; PMCID: PMC10375401.

Ganesh K, Basnet H, Kaygusuz Y, Laughney AM, He L, Sharma R, O’Rourke KP, Reuter VP, Huang YH, Turkekul M, Er EE, Masilionis I, Manova-Todorova K, Weiser MR, Saltz LB, Garcia-Aguilar J, Koche R, Lowe SW, Pe’er D, Shia J, Massagué J. L1CAM defines the regenerative origin of metastasis-initiating cells in colorectal cancer. Nat Cancer. 2020 Jan;1(1):28-45. doi: 10.1038/s43018-019-0006-x. Epub 2020 Jan 13. Erratum in: Nat Cancer. 2020 Nov;1(11):1128. PMID: 32656539; PMCID: PMC7351134.

Ganesh K, Wu C, O’Rourke KP, Szeglin BC, Zheng Y, Sauvé CG, Adileh M, Wasserman I, Marco MR, Kim AS, Shady M, Sanchez-Vega F, Karthaus WR, Won HH, Choi SH, Pelossof R, Barlas A, Ntiamoah P, Pappou E, Elghouayel A, Strong JS, Chen CT, Harris JW, Weiser MR, Nash GM, Guillem JG, Wei IH, Kolesnick RN, Veeraraghavan H, Ortiz EJ, Petkovska I, Cercek A, Manova-Todorova KO, Saltz LB, Lavery JA, DeMatteo RP, Massagué J, Paty PB, Yaeger R, Chen X, Patil S, Clevers H, Berger MF, Lowe SW, Shia J, Romesser PB, Dow LE, Garcia-Aguilar J, Sawyers CL, Smith JJ. A rectal cancer organoid platform to study individual responses to chemoradiation. Nat Med. 2019 Oct;25(10):1607-1614. doi: 10.1038/s41591-019-0584-2. Epub 2019 Oct 7. PMID: 31591597; PMCID: PMC7385919.

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People

Karuna Ganesh

Karuna Ganesh, MD, PhD

Assistant Member and Medical Oncologist

Assistant Professor

  • Physician-scientist Karuna Ganesh studies stem cell plasticity in metastasis, therapy resistance and tissue regeneration.
  • MD, PhD, University of Cambridge (UK)
[email protected]
Email Address
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Physician profile

Members

Sabrina Benbader

Admin Assistant

Ellie Benitez
Elizabeth "Ellie" Benitez

MD/PhD Student

Christopher Cowley

Research Scholar

Stefanie
Stefanie Gerstberger

Medical Oncology Fellow

Qingwen Jiang
Qingwen Jiang

Research Associate

Josh Lee
Jaeyop Lee

Medical Oncology Fellow

Josh Leinwand
Josh Leinwand

Surgical Oncology Fellow

Kathleen Luckett
Kathleen Luckett

MD/PhD Student

Ahmed Mahmoud
Ahmed Mahmoud

Graduate Student, Weill Cornell Pharmacology Program

Manisha Raghavan
Manisha Raghavan

PhD Student/Gerstner Sloan Kettering Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences

Andres Rettig

Postdoctoral Fellow

Aileen Rodriguez
Aileen Rodriguez

Bridge Scholar, Research Assistant

Asha
Asha Saxena

Clinical Research Project Associate

Christine Sukhwa
Christine Sukhwa

Research Technician

Julia Zehenter
Lab Alumni
Simran Asawa
Simran Asawa

PhD student, ETH Zurich

Narmen Azazmeh
Narmen Azazmeh

Postdoctoral Fellow, Dana Farber Cancer Institute

Sasha Balkaran
Sasha Balkaran

Research Technician

Jonathan Bermeo

Lab Manager

Francesco Cambuli
Francesco Cambuli

Research Fellow

Andre Chavez

Lab Manager

Laura Eibler

Graduate Student, Weill Cornell Pharmacology Program

Lucas Evans

Lab SKI Admin II

Chileshe Ferris
Chileshe Ferris

Administrative Assistant

Saskia Hartner
Saskia Hartner

Graduate Research Assistant

Mel-Quann Hodge

Administrative Assistant

Valeria Sgambati

Research Scientist at Frequency Therapeutics

Tamiika White
Tamiika White

Lab Assistant

Lab Affiliations

Achievements

  • Metastasis Research Society Sue Eccles Early Career Investigator Award (2024)
  • HHMI Freeman Hrabowski Scholar Finalist (2023)
  • Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Cancer Research (2022)
  • NIH/NCI R37 MERIT Award (2022)
  • HHMI Gilliam Scholar Award(Mahmoud/Ganesh) (2022)
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  • AACR NextGen Award for Transformative Cancer Research (2020)
  • Phillip A. Sharp Innovation Award, Stand Up to Cancer (2022)
  • Josie Robertson Investigator (2019-2024)
  • Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award (2019)
  • Burroughs Wellcome Career Award for Medical Scientists (2019)
  • NIH/NCI K08 Clinician Scientist Career Development Award (2018)
  • Investigator, Stand Up to Cancer Colorectal Cancer Dream Team (2017)
  • American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship (2017)
  • Shulamit Katzman Endowed Postdoctoral Fellowship (2017)
  • Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO Young Investigator Award (2016)
  • AACR Basic Cancer Research Fellowship (2016)
  • MRC-LMB PhD Scholarship (2006)
  • Gates Cambridge Scholarship (2004)

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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.

Karuna Ganesh discloses the following relationships and financial interests:

No disclosures meeting criteria for time period


The information published here 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, 2022 through disclosure submission in spring 2023). 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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