Joanna Wegrzyn Woltosz

Dr. Joanna Wegrzyn Woltosz first became attracted to cancer research during studies in her home country, Poland, where she completed a combined five-year BS/MS program in molecular biology and a PhD in biochemistry at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. During her master’s degree studies, her research focused on the role of abnormal angiogenesis in cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Her PhD research project, conducted entirely at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, focused on studying defects in mitochondrial metabolism of cardiac muscle cells. After completing her PhD in October 2007, she relocated with her doctoral thesis advisor to the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, Virginia), where she worked as a post-doctoral on the completion of her thesis work manuscript, which was accepted to Science. This work also led to a collaboration and co-authorship on a second Science paper, where it was shown that Ras-dependent transformation utilizes mitochondrial Stat3.

Woltosz’s current post-doctoral fellow position at the Genome Sciences Centre expands her extensive knowledge in the field of oncology into the role of stem cells in malignant hematological disorders.

Recent Publications

Venner CP, Woltosz JW, Nevill TJ, Deeg HJ, Caceres G, Platzbecker U, Scott BL, Sokol L, Sung S, List AF, Karsan A. Correlation of clinical response and response duration with miR-145 induction by lenalidomide in CD34(+) cells from patients with del(5q) myelodysplastic syndrome. Haematologica. 2013 Mar;98(3):409-13. doi: 10.3324/haematol.2012.066068. Epub 2012 Aug 28. (PubMed abstract)

Starczynowski DT, Lockwood WW, Deléhouzée S, Chari R, Wegrzyn J, Fuller M, Tsao MS, Lam S, Gazdar AF, Lam WL, Karsan A. TRAF6 is an amplified oncogene bridging the RAS and NF-κB pathways in human lung cancer. J Clin Invest. 2011 Oct;121(10):4095-105. doi: 10.1172/JCI58818. Epub 2011 Sep 12. (PubMed abstract)

Wegrzyn J, Lam JC, Karsan A. Mouse models of myelodysplastic syndromes. Leuk Res. 2011 Jul;35(7):853-62. doi: 10.1016/j.leukres.2011.03.007. Epub 2011 Apr 3. (PubMed abstract)

Gough DJ, Corlett A, Schlessinger K, Wegrzyn J, Larner AC, Levy DE. Mitochondrial STAT3 supports Ras-dependent oncogenic transformation. Science. 2009 Jun 26;324(5935):1713-6. doi: 10.1126/science.1171721. (PubMed abstract)

Wegrzyn J, Potla R, Chwae YJ, Sepuri NB, Zhang Q, Koeck T, Derecka M, Szczepanek K, Szelag M, Gornicka A, Moh A, Moghaddas S, Chen Q, Bobbili S, Cichy J, Dulak J, Baker DP, Wolfman A, Stuehr D, Hassan MO, Fu XY, Avadhani N, Drake JI, Fawcett P, Lesnefsky EJ, Larner AC. Function of mitochondrial Stat3 in cellular respiration. Science. 2009 Feb 6;323(5915):793-7. doi: 10.1126/science.1164551. Epub 2009 Jan 8. (PubMed abstract)