CROOKS AND KOHN LAB ALUMNI IN SAN DIEGO
September 20, 2023
Former Crooks lab members Claire Engstrom and Patrick Chang met up with Kohn lab alumni in San Diego! Claire is starting graduate school at UCSD and Patrick is working in San Diego.
BROAD STEM CELL CELEBRATES NATIONAL DOG DAY
August 25, 2023
Watch this adorable video featuring Dr. Crooks and her dog Monty!
GOING AWAY LUNCH FOR CLAIRE
July 25, 2023
Staff Research Associate Claire Engstrom is leaving the lab to go to grad school at UCSD! Congrats Claire!!
JULIA GENSHEIMER INTERVIEWED BY WOMEN IN RESEARCH BLOG
July 9, 2023
Julia was recently featured in the Women in Research blog as part of her participation in the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting.
CROOKS/KOHN LAB JOINT SUMMER PARTY
July 8, 2023
Every summer, Dr. Crooks and Dr. Kohn host a joint summer party at the home of Dr. Crooks, complete with swimming and BBQ!
ALEX YOO RECEIVES RUTH L. KIRSCHSTEIN NATIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE AWARD F30 FROM NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE
July 1, 2023
Alex’s project is “Engineering detours around the biological barriers to allogenic, iPSC-derived CAR T cell immunotherapy.” Way to go!!
JULIA GENSHEIMER ATTENDS LINDAU NOBEL LAUREATE MEETING
June 24, 2023
Julia was selected as one of three students from UCLA to attend the 72nd annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau, Germany. She spent a week learning from Nobel Laureates and meeting other young scientists from 98 different countries. Congrats Julia!
GOING AWAY HAPPY HOUR FOR PATRICK
June 6, 2023
Former PhD student turned postdoctoral fellow in the Crooks lab, Dr. Patrick Chang, is leaving the lab to work at UCSD. Cheers Patrick!!
WELCOME ANTHONY, LINDSAY, AND EMMA TO THE LAB!
June 1, 2023
Anthony Azzun, Lindsay Lathrop, and Emma Moulton have recently joined our lab to complete their PhD training! Welcome!!
DR. GLORIA YIU COMPLETES HER RHEUMATOLOGY STAR FELLOWSHIP
June 1, 2023
Congrats to Dr. Gloria Yiu for completing her STAR fellowship training program at UCLA in Rheumatology! She is now a clinical instructor!!
CROOKS LAB ATTENDS AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF GENE AND CELL THERAPY CONFERENCE
May 16, 2023
Dr. Crooks and multiple lab members attended the AGSCT conference in Los Angeles, CA. Both Dr. Crooks and Alex Yoo gave talks at the meeting.
CROOKS LAB AWARDED $1.4 MILLION CIRM GRANT
March 28, 2023
The Crooks lab received a $1.4 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine!!
Crooks’ $1.4 million award will fund her work to develop a gene-engineered platform that produces universal, off-the-shelf CAR T cells from induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs, cells that can differentiate into any cell type in the body. In CAR T cell immunotherapy, T cells from a patient’s own blood are modified to carry chimeric antigen receptors, or CARs, to attack and kill tumor cells. This approach has shown to be a powerful treatment option for blood cancers, but gathering enough functional T cells from a patient’s blood can be difficult and manufacturing CAR T cells for each individual patient is time-consuming and inconsistent. Crooks and her collaborators are tackling these limitations by developing a gene editing approach to create an off-the-shelf, universal CAR T cell product that can be used with any CAR. CAR T cells produced from universal iPSCs could be used immediately to treat patients from all ethnic groups without the problem of immune rejection. If successful, the novel platform will make T cell immunotherapy more widely accessible for the treatment of blood cancers as well as of solid tumors like brain cancer and breast cancer.
Read press release here: https://stemcell.ucla.edu/news/ucla-scientists-receive-57-million-cirm-grants-advance-stem-cell-based-technologies
Dr. CROOKS ATTENDS THYMOZ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE on T CELLS
March 22, 2023
Dr. Crooks attended the ThymOz meeting at Heron Island, Australia and presented recent work from the lab.
NEW PAPER PUBLISHED IN CELL
March 20, 2023
A new paper out of the Crooks and Kohn labs with co-first authors Grace McAuley and Gloria Yiu was published today in Cell. Way to go team!!
Read the press release here: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucla-base-editing-mutation-cd3-delta-scid
Read the paper here: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)00170-8
CROOKS/KOHN LAB RETREAT
January 13, 2023
The Crooks and Kohn labs got together for a day of science talks, good food, and fellowship at our (soon to be) annual retreat!!
ANNUAL HOLIDAY PARTY
December 8, 2022
Every year the lab exchanges gifts in a game of White Elephant and enjoys a delicious meal before the holiday break!
CROOKS AND SEET LAB WIN BSCRC HALLOWEEN COSTUME CONTEST
October 31, 2022
Crooks and Seet lab members lit up Halloween dressed as fluorescent antibodies and took home the BSCRC costume contest prize of a pizza party!!
GOING AWAY LUNCH FOR SHAWN
September 15, 2022
Lab manager Shawn Lopez is leaving us for a new job at Miltenyi Biotec! We hope this means we will get more Miltenyi swag!! Congrats!
CROOKS LAB ATTENDs ENGINEERING IMMUNITY RETREAT
September 5, 2022
Patrick Chang, Xuegang Yuan, Alex Yoo, and Claire Engstrom attended the Engineering Immunity retreat at Lake Arrowhead, CA.
LAB MEMBERS ATTEND AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF IMMUNOLOGY SUMMER COURSE
July 12, 2022
Xuegang Yuan, Alex Yoo, and Julia Gensheimer will spend a week at the AAI Introductory Immunology Course, conveniently located at UCLA!
XUEGANG YUAN AND ALEX YOO AWARDED BROAD STEM CELL RESEARCH CENTER FELLOWSHIPS
July 1, 2022
Xuegang Yuan and Alex Yoo were selected for UCLA BSCRC fellowships. They will take a course in stem cell biology and participate in a stem cell seminar series. Congrats!
PATRICK’S THESIS DEFENSE
May 24, 2022
Congrats to our latest doctor, Dr. Patrick Chang, PhD for his successful thesis defense today!
SUWEN’s THESIS DEFENSE
May 23, 2022
Congrats Dr. Suwen Li on a successful PhD thesis defense!! Suwen will continue working at UCLA as a postdoctoral fellow in the Seet lab. Way to go!
DR. CROOKS INTERVIEWED BY CALIFORNIA NANOSYSTEMS INSTITUTE
March 29, 2022
Dr. Crooks speaks about her love for research and LA!!
NEW STUDY FEATURED BY CELL THERAPY NEWS
March 29, 2022
A recent publication in Cell Stem Cell was featured by Cell Therapy News. Read the full article here: https://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/fulltext/S1934-5909(22)00060-1
CROOKS LAB HOLIDAY PARTY
December 11, 2021
Our annual holiday party was complete with a white elephant gift exchange and lunch at House of Meatballs in Westwood!
ALEX’S GOING AWAY LUNCH
October 19, 2021
Staff Research Associate Alex Zampieri is leaving the lab to work at a biotech company! Congrats Alex!
STEM CELL AWARENESS DAY
October 13, 2021
Dr. Crooks is featured in a post by the UCLA BSCRC on Stem Cell Awareness Day! We love stem cells!!
VICTORIA’S THESIS DEFENSE
June 14, 2021
Victoria Sun defended her thesis entitled “The metabolic landscape of thymic T cell development in vivo and vitro.” She will return to medical school to complete her MD/PhD training. Congrats Victoria!!
CROOKS LAB DEVELOPS ARTIFICIAL THYMIC ORGANOID
January 17, 2019
A study by UCLA researchers is the first to demonstrate a technique for coaxing pluripotent stem cells — which can give rise to every cell type in the body and which can be grown indefinitely in the lab — into becoming mature T cells capable of killing tumor cells.
The technique uses structures called artificial thymic organoids, which work by mimicking the environment of the thymus, the organ in which T cells develop from blood stem cells.
Read the press release here: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/renewable-source-cancer-fighting-t-cells
Read the paper in Cell Stem Cell: https://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/fulltext/S1934-5909(18)30601-5