Lab ice skating trip

January 31, 2024

To welcome our new postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Songtao Ye and the new rotation student, Celia Hallinan from BCMB program, Cai lab adventured to the Homewood campus and did ice skating at the JHU ice rink. It was such a fun and memorable event.

Happy Holidays!

December 20, 2023

The Cai lab celebrated the holiday season with some yummy food, snacks, and reflection of an awesome year. Looking forward to more exciting science and personal growth and achievements in the new year!

Congratulations to Choon Leng So and Ethan Black, this year’s Scholastic Award Winners

December 14, 2023

We’ve gotten good news that our very own Choon and Ethan are this year’s BMB Scholastic Award winners. Choon won the Pierre Coulombe Award, which fuels the professional development of a postdoc fellow, while Ethan won the Brian Crawford and Family award, which recognizes the achievements of a PhD student in academics, research, and service and is used to foster collaborative science within BMB. Way to go Choon and Ethan!

Congratulations to Nadav Benhamou Goldfajn for winning the PURA Award

October 25, 2023

Congratulations to Nadav, the undergraduate student of Cai lab for winning the prestigious Provost’s Undergraduate Research Award (PURA)!! Nadav has been charting the interactome of membrane-less organelles in the Cai lab. The $3000 award will fuel exciting discoveries.

The Cai lab ventured to the Ellicott City for a fun end-of-summer lab outing

August 23, 2023

Food tour at the Ellicott city (Korean food and bubble tea), and hiking at the Patapsco park.

Two new review articles from the Cai lab published

August 11, 2023

We are excited to contribute two new review articles. Published in Nucleus, former postdoctoral fellow Justin wrote about how transcriptional condensates can condense information across scales. Published in Current Opinion in Cell Biology, master student Jindayi provided tantalizing speculations about how membrane-less organelles interact. Congratulations Justin and Jindayi!

Yiran (Erin) Wang, Ethan Black joined the Cai lab as new PhD students

May 5, 2023

We are excited to welcome Erin and Ethan, both from the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology PhD Program join our lab! Erin is interested in how fusion oncoproteins lead to cancer, while Ethan (jointly mentored by Dr. Ashani Weeraratna) is interested in finding out how aging changes biomolecular condensation. Welcome Erin and Ethan!

Congratulations to Jane Lee for winning the Elsa Orent Keiles Award

Mar 3, 2023

This prestigious award in Johns Hopkins School of Public Health recognizes a PhD student who has excelled academically and in the lab and has distinguished themselves as an outstanding example for her fellows. We are proud of your achievements, Jane!

We celebrate the holidays and reflect on the awesome year of 2022

December 19, 2022

Despite challenges worldwide related to the pandemic and supply chain issues, the Cai lab had a productive year of 2022. We have assembled a talented and hardworking team of scientists and made impressive progresses on our projects. We published one review article and one research preprint, submitted a patent application, and obtained two grants (one research grant from the DoD, and an equipment grant from the NIH: new microscope alert!). We also attended the Departmental retreat, and the annual American Society for Cell Biology meeting as a lab. The Cai lab is alive and well, and I cannot wait to see what we can accomplish in the New Year.

Cai Lab at the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Annual Retreat

October 27, 2022

In-person meeting is so much better. We had fun talking about our science and making new connections.

Congratulations to Jane Lee, PhD student in our lab for winning the first-place poster prize!!

New funding received from the Department of Defense to study membrane-less organelles in kidney cancer

August 9, 2022

We are very happy to receive an Idea Development Award from the Department of Defense-Congressionally Distributed Medical Research Programs-Kidney Cancer Research Program. The 3 year award will allow us to study the roles of membrane-less organelles (MLOs) in kidney cancer. MLOs have long been used to diagnose and grade kidney cancers. However, their roles in cancer formation and progression are unknown. We hope, by studying these MLOs using advanced microscopy and proteomics, we will uncover their functions, which ultimately can lead to MLO-targeted cancer therapies. We want to thank Dr. Marston Linehan (NCI) for providing us valuable patient-derived cell lines and samples for studying these cancers. We also want to thank the Cai lab members for their hard work, especially master student Binglin Huang for his preliminary data.

New Paper from the Cai Lab Published in Trends in Cell Biology

June 11, 2022

The first paper of the Cai lab “Roles of YAP/TAZ in Ferroptosis“ is now online at Trends in Cell Biology! In this paper we talked about how YAP/TAZ regulate ferroptosis, and how this knowledge can be harnessed to treat therapy-resistant cancer. It is a really rewarding process writing with the BMB master student Suchitra Magesh. Great job!

Dr. Cai is selected as a Kavli Fellow by the National Academy of Sciences

July 8, 2022

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) selected 185 of the nation's brightest young scientists from industry, academia, and government to participate in the 2022 U.S. and international Kavli Frontiers of Science symposia of the NAS. These three-day events brought together scientists who are 45 or younger to engage in exceptional research in a variety of disciplines. A committee of NAS members selected the participants from among young researchers who have already made recognized contributions to science.

Dr. Cai is selected for her contribution in phase separation model for eukaryotic transcription control, and will chair the session in the Chinese-American symposium in Irvine, California. Congratulations Dani!

Jane Lee joins Cai Lab as the first PhD student

April 23, 2022

We are very excited to have Jane Lee joining our lab as the first PhD student. Can’t wait to see what you can accomplish Jane!

Season’s finale-welcome new rotation students

March 28th, 2022

We welcome the last group of PhD rotation students to the Cai Lab! Nick Zhu and Beth Todd from the Cellular and Molecular Medicine (CMM) graduate program will be exploring the functions of biomolecular condensates in renal cell carcinoma. Welcome Nick and Beth! Finish the season strong!

The Cai Lab had some skating fun

Feb 11th, 2022

It was a very warm day and the Cai Lab ventured out to the JHU skating ring on the Homewood Campus for an afternoon of skating fun! Justin and Jane demonstrated their wonderful skating skills while we watched in awe. Siyuan and Kwaku tried ice skating for the first time-nice job! It’s been a while since we could sit outside and enjoy some nice weather and chat. Looking forward to the next lab outing.

Welcome new PhD students for rotation!

Jan 11th, 2022

We are very excited to welcome two new PhD students to the Cai Lab for rotations. Kwaku Quansah (CMM Program) will set up cancer migration assays, while Jane Lee (JHSPH BMB Program) will work on how membrane-less organelles affect fusion oncoproteins. We are very excited to have you Kwaku and Jane!

We are back to in-person lab meetings!

Nov 5th, 2021

We are excited to be back to in-person lab meetings. Suchitra Magesh, a master student presented a nice journal club paper, followed by discussions from lab members.

We are now funded by a NIH R35 MIRA Grant!!

July 26th, 2021

We appreciate the generous support from NIGMS. A great start to the many good years of curiosity-driven research.

Cheers!!

Cai Lab holds the first-ever lab lunch at Fells Point

July 8th, 2021

Justin, Binglin, Britney, and Dani went down to the Fells Point for a very relaxing lab lunch by the water. Cheers to the good news (to be disclosed!).

Binglin Huang joins Cai Lab!

June 28th, 2021

Binglin, a master student from the BMB department joined Cai lab for dissertation! Welcome Binglin!

Britney joins Cai Lab for a summer internship

June 1, 2021

Britney He, an undergraduate student from Grinnell College, joins Cai lab for a summer internship. Welcome Britney!

Dr. Justin Demmerle joins Cai Lab!

May 1, 2021

Justin, hailing from the Todd MacFarlan (NICHD) and ‪Lothar Schermelleh (Oxford U) Labs, joins Cai lab as a T32 postdoctoral fellow. Justin is an expert in 3D genome organization and super resolution imaging. Welcome Justin! We are so glad to have you onboard!

Cai Lab officially opens!

March 15, 2021

The Cai Lab has officially opened its doors. We are excited about working with talented people in the newly-renovated space to explore the role of biomolecular condensates in homeostasis and diseases.

Lab space under renovation!

November 6, 2020

Though COVID has shut down almost everything, our lab space renovation is still moving at a rapid speed! Kudos to the JHSPH renovation team.

Dr. Cai joins Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center

October 20, 2020

Dr. Cai was appointed a member of the renowned Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, in the Cancer Invasion and Metastasis Program. We look forward to years of scientific interactions with the cancer biologists at the Center!

Danfeng Cai Speaks at IDPSeminars

August 20, 2020

Dr. Cai was invited to speak at the IDPSeminars series to present her research “phase separation in chromatin organization and transcription regulation”. She had fun interacting with the “intrinsically-disordered“ community of scientists!