Dana-Farber Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center
Boston, United States
Eshini Panditharatna, PhD is a Research Fellow in Dr. Mariella G. Filbin’s lab in the department of Pediatric Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She completed her PhD training in Molecular Medicine at The George Washington University, under Dr. Javad Nazarian’s mentorship at the Children’s National Hospital. For her doctoral dissertation, she conducted genomic profiling of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) autopsy specimens to study tumor dissemination, and described the concept of oncohistone partner mutations; and developed a novel liquid biopsy assay to detect the histone 3 K27M mutation (H3K27M) in H3K27M-diffuse midline glioma (DMG) patients’ CSF and plasma for tumor surveillance and longitudinal monitoring for tumor response to therapy. Her current research focuses on epigenetic vulnerabilities induced by H3K27M in DMG. She is integrating data from single cell transcriptomics and functional CRISPR/Cas9 screens to elucidate the role of specific chromatin remodeling complexes and histone modifier dependencies, with the goal of identifying novel combinations of epigenetic targeted therapy to treat children diagnosed with H3K27M-DMG.