NEW! We are happy to announce that the Lazzara Lab is accepting new PhD students and postdoctoral associates in 2025. Interested candidates should email Dr. Matthew Lazzara at mlazzara@virginia.edu.

Website updates underway! Updated project descriptions coming soon!

NEW PAPER! Check out an early version of "Systems Biology of the Cancer Cell," just published online in Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering. It's a comprehensive review of cancer cell systems biology co-authored by Matt Lazzara and Kevin Janes. Final version to publish in May 2025.

Lab Overview. The Lazzara Lab studies cancer cell signaling in the tumor microenvironment. We seek to identify and leverage the signaling pathways cancer cells use to resist therapy so we can design more effective combination therapies for pancreas and brain cancers. The problems are inherently high-dimensional because signaling information is encoded through temporal and spatial changes in thousands of transcripts and proteins. The degree of complexity is so high that a systems biology approach relying on iteration between experimentation and computation is indispensable for identifying the rate processes or druggable pathways that determine the cancer phenotypes we seek to control.

Experimental methods — Transcriptomics, proteomics, cellular barcoding, quantitative cell biology and biochemistry, genetic engineering of cell model systems, mouse models of cancer, and therapeutic peptide design.

Computational methods — Machine learning, information theory, agent-based models, and mechanistic modeling based on differential equations.

Cross-disciplinary collaboration — Our work in quantitative cancer biology requires close collaboration with other biomedical and chemical engineers, cancer biologists, biochemists, medical and surgical oncologists, and pathologists.