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We study the damage before it becomes a diagnosis.

The Madireddy Lab at Rutgers Cancer Institute studies why some regions of the genome are hard to copy, and what breaks when replication fails there.

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Research

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Some regions of the human genome are simply hard to copy.

Six steps joined left to right by arrows: genotoxic insult (dietary dyes, WTC dust, protein deficiency, viral infections); DNA damage and stalled forks; damage tolerance versus DNA repair, the fork in the road; genomic scars (breaks, micronuclei, signatures); pre-cancer (clonal expansion); and cancer. Projects 1, 2 and 3 sit under the first step, project 4 under the second and project 5 under the third; project 2 again under pre-cancer; and a branch from pre-cancer leads to early detection, the therapeutic window.

  1. Genotoxic insult

    dietary dyes, WTC dust, protein deficiency, viral infections

    what the exposure does

  2. DNA damage & stalled forks

    EP300 loss breaks fork protection

  3. Damage tolerance vs. DNA repair

    the fork in the road

    Pol η × FANCD2 decide which

  4. Genomic scars

    breaks, micronuclei, signatures

  5. Pre-cancer

    clonal expansion

    why the same loci, again and again

    Early detection, therapeutic window

  6. Cancer

One framework, five entry points. Projects 1, 2 and 3 ask what the exposure does; project 4, how EP300 loss breaks fork protection; project 5, how polymerase η and FANCD2 decide between tolerance and repair; and project 2 again, at the far end, why the damage keeps landing at the same few loci.

  1. Dietary Azo Dye Toxicity: Mutagenesis & Carcinogenesis

    Red 40 and Yellow 6 are the two most heavily used azo dyes in the U.S. food supply. Gut bacteria cleave them into reactive aromatic amines that attack DNA.

  2. 9/11 World Trade Center Exposure: From Dust to Leukemia

    First responders carry elevated rates of premalignant and malignant blood cells decades after the collapse. Which mutational processes does a complex exposure leave behind, and why do they land at the same few loci every time?

  3. How Viruses Maintain Themselves Inside Our Genomes

    Some cancers begin with an infection. We study where a virus puts itself inside our chromosomes, what that does to the chromatin around it, and whether it lands where the genome was already hard to copy.

  4. EP300 Loss in Adult T-cell Leukemia: Finding the Therapeutic Window

    Targeting BRCA2 loss — EP300 loss leads to BRCA2 protein loss; cells behave like BRCA-deficient tumors, sensitive to PARP, REV1 and Pol θ inhibitors.

  5. When a Fork Stalls: The Proteins That Protect Difficult DNA

    Getting past an obstacle takes a handoff between translesion polymerase η and FANCD2. We map how it is coordinated, what fails when it is not and how PHF6 — the most mutated gene in pediatric T-ALL — turns out to be part of it.

Join the lab

Positions and contact
  • Postdoctoral fellowOpen

    Seeking passionate scientists with expertise in molecular biology, genomics or bioinformatics to lead innovative research projects.

  • Graduate studentsOpen

    Rotations run through the Molecular Biosciences Graduate Program at Rutgers University.

What you’ll learn here: from mapping DNA replication to post-replicative repair.

Recent papers

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News

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  • Julia Gagliardi moves from research technician to PhD candidate in the lab

  • Saloni Patel completes her Master’s

  • The 22nd International Conference on HTLV, in Philadelphia, hears the lab’s EP300 work in ATLL

People

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Advaitha Madireddy, PhD

Principal Investigator

Advaitha Madireddy has led the lab since it opened in 2018, after a PhD at the University of Pittsburgh and six years as a postdoctoral fellow at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She works on replication stress and genome instability in Fanconi anemia, clonal hematopoiesis and leukemia.

  • Mrunmai Niljikar, MS

    PhD Candidate

  • Julia Gagliardi

    PhD Candidate

    Formerly the lab’s Research Teaching Specialist IV and research technician.

  • Apeksha Fernandes

    Undergraduate Student

  • Caroline Mazurek

    Undergraduate Student

  • Anya Kotha

    Lab Member

Also in the lab: Carolina Plasencia, Joshua Thomas, Saloni Patel, Smrithi Amran and Mark Youssef.

The alumni are on the people page.