Molecular Pharmacology Program

The Omar Abdel-Wahab Lab

Omar Abdel-Wahab, MD

Chair, Molecular Pharmacology Program, SKI; Attending Physician, Leukemia Service

Professor

Omar Abdel-Wahab is the Chair of SKI Molecular Pharmacology Program, an Attending Physician on the Leukemia Service in the Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and the Director of Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Center for Hematologic Malignancies.

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Featured News

In the Lab

Research Suggests How Boosting Neoantigens Can Make Immunotherapy More Effective

Thursday, June 24, 2021

In mice, drugs that change the way proteins are assembled appear to make checkpoint inhibitor drugs work better.

In the Lab

Sloan Kettering Institute molecular biologist Christine Mayr

Scientists Find Cancer Drivers Hiding in a New Place

Monday, August 27, 2018

New findings from researchers at the Sloan Kettering Institute suggest that cancer causes may be lurking in the molecule that bridges DNA and protein.

In the Lab

MSK physician-scientist Omar Abdel-Wahab

Splicing May Be an Effective Target in the Fight against Cancer

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

New drugs are being developed that target part of the process to make proteins.

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Publications

Chen S, Vedula RS, Cuevas-Navarro A, Lu B, Hogg SJ, Wang E, Benbarche S, Knorr K, Kim WJ, Stanley RF, Cho H, Erickson C, Singer M, Cui D, Tittley S, Durham BH, Pavletich TS, Fiala E, Walsh MF, Inoue D, Monette S, Taylor J, Rosen N, McCormick F, Lindsley RC, Castel P, Abdel-Wahab O. Impaired Proteolysis of Noncanonical RAS Proteins Drives Clonal Hematopoietic Transformation. Cancer Discov. 2022 Oct 5;12(10):2434-2453. doi: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-21-1631. PMID: 35904492;

Tanaka A, Nakano TA, Nomura M, Yamazaki H, Bewersdorf JP, Mulet-Lazaro R, Hogg S, Liu B, Penson A, Yokoyama A, Zang W, Havermans M, Koizumi M, Hayashi Y, Cho H, Kanai A, Lee SC, Xiao M, Koike Y, Zhang Y, Fukumoto M, Aoyama Y, Konuma T, Kunimoto H, Inaba T, Nakajima H, Honda H, Kawamoto H, Delwel R, Abdel-Wahab O (co-corresponding), Inoue D (co-corresponding). Aberrant EVI1 splicing contributes to EVI1-rearranged leukemia. Blood. 2022 Aug 25;140(8):875-888. doi: 10.1182/blood.2021015325.

North K, Benbarche S, Liu B, Pangallo J, Chen S, Stahl M, Bewersdorf JP, Stanley RF, Erickson C, Cho H, Pineda JMB, Thomas JD, Polaski JT, Belleville AE, Gabel AM, Udy DB, Humbert O, Kiem HP, Abdel-Wahab O (co-corresponding), Bradley RK (co-corresponding). Synthetic introns enable splicing factor mutation-dependent targeting of cancer cells. Nat Biotechnol. 2022 Mar 3. doi: 10.1038/s41587-022-01224-2. Epub ahead of print.

Wang E, Mi X, Thompson MC, Montoya S, Notti RQ, Afaghani J, Durham BH, Penson A, Witkowski MT, Lu SX, Bourcier J, Hogg SJ, Erickson C, Cui D, Cho H, Singer M, Totiger TM, Chaudhry S, Geyer M, Alencar A, Linley AJ, Palomba ML, Coombs CC, Park JH, Zelenetz A, Roeker L, Rosendahl M, Tsai DE, Ebata K, Brandhuber B, Hyman DM, Aifantis I, Mato A, Taylor J, Abdel-Wahab O. Mechanisms of Resistance to Noncovalent Bruton’s Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors. N Engl J Med. 2022 Feb 24;386(8):735-743. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2114110.

Lu SX, De Neef E, Thomas JD, Sabio E, Rousseau B, Gigoux M, Knorr DA, Greenbaum B, Elhanati Y, Hogg SJ, Chow A, Ghosh A, Xie A, Zamarin D, Cui D, Erickson C, Singer M, Cho H, Wang E, Lu B, Durham BH, Shah H, Chowell D, Gabel AM, Shen Y, Liu J, Jin J, Rhodes MC, Taylor RE, Molina H, Wolchok JD, Merghoub T, Diaz LA Jr, Abdel-Wahab O (co-corresponding; Lead Contact), Bradley RK (co-corresponding). Pharmacologic modulation of RNA splicing enhances anti-tumor immunity. Cell. 2021 Jun 18:S0092-8674(21)00690-5. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.05.038. Epub ahead of print.

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People

Omar Abdel-Wahab, MD

Chair, Molecular Pharmacology Program, SKI; Attending Physician, Leukemia Service

Professor

Physician-scientist Omar Abdel-Wahab studies the functional genomics of hematopoietic malignancies.
MD, Duke University School of Medicine

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

Members

Ha Na Cho, Research Assistant — Hana Cho
Research Assistant

Benjamin Durham (Pathology) — Benjamin Durham
Assistant Attending Pathologist

Takeshi Fujino

Bin Lu, Research Associate — Bin Lu
Research Associate

Erich Sabio

Senior Research Scientist

Steven Tittley
Senior Research Assistant

Lab Alumni

Lillian Bitner, Research Technician — Lillian Bitner
Research Technician

Anna Chan

Research Technician

Luisa Escobar Hoyos

Research Fellow

Monisha Hosier
Administrative Assistant II

Daichi Inoue, Visiting Investigator — Daichi Inoue
Visiting Investigator

Pictured: Stanley Lee — Stanley Lee
Research Associate

Bo Liu, Research Associate — Bo Liu
Research Associate

Sydney Lu, Research Fellow — Sydney Lu
Assistant Member, Myeloma Service

Alessandro Pastore, Senior Research Scientist — Alessandro Pastore
Senior Research Scientist

Alexander Penson, PhD — Alexander Penson
Senior Computational Biologist

Danielle Richards

Program Assistant

Justin Taylor

Instructor (Dept. of Medicine)

Akihide Yoshimi, Senior Research Scientist — Akihide Yoshimi
Senior Research Scientist

Xiao Zhang

Lab Affiliations

Achievements

Josie Robertson Investigator (2012-2017)
Seldin-Smith Award for Pioneering Research, American Society of Clinical Investigation
Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators in Cancer Research
Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Clinical Scholar Award
Joanne Levy Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement, American Society of Hematology

V Scholar Award, V Foundation
Junior Faculty Scholar Award, American Society of Hematology (ASH)
Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award

Get in Touch

[email protected]

Lab Head Email

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.

Omar Abdel-Wahab discloses the following relationships and financial interests:

AIchemy, Inc.
Equity; Professional Services and Activities (Uncompensated)
Array Biopharma
Professional Services and Activities
AstraZeneca
Professional Services and Activities
Codify Therapeutics, Inc.
Equity; Intellectual Property Rights; Professional Services and Activities (Uncompensated)
Envisagenics
Equity; Professional Services and Activities (Uncompensated)

Epizyme
Intellectual Property Rights
Harmonic Discovery Inc.
Equity
Janssen Global Services, LLC
Professional Services and Activities
Loxo Oncology
Professional Services and Activities
Pfizer, Inc.
Professional Services and Activities

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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