Harbour Lab / People
Dr. William Harbour
Dr. Harbour has been involved in cancer research since 1987, at which time he was first author of an article that appeared in the journal Science regarding the retinoblastoma (Rb) tumor suppressor gene. His basic research interests include the role of Rb in melanocyte differentiation and melanoma formation, and the relationship between development, stem cells and cancer. Translational research interests include molecular prognostic testing and preemptive therapeutic strategies in cancer patients.
Kristi Bullock (Administrative Coordinator)
Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. Kristi was a bank manager prior to working at Washington University School of Medicine, and has been at WUSM for 17 years. She started in the Department of Surgery in the Division of Liver and Kidney Transplant, and later worked for the Chief of Surgery in the Dept. of Surgical Oncology. Prior to joining the Harbour Lab, Kristi worked for 10 years for the Medical Director of the Heart Failure/Heart Transplant Program in the Department of Cardiology.
Olga Agapova (Staff Scientist)
Olga grew up in the middle of Russia in Siberia. There she graduated from Novosibirsk State University with a degree in Biology and received her PhD at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics. Olga worked in the Ophthalmology department seven years before joining the Harbour Lab in March 2006. In addition to bench work she loves outdoor activities such as mountain hiking, kayaking and gardening. Olga works on the identification and characterization of melanocytes and how their development and differentiation may shed light on the malignant potential of melanomas.
Mike Onken (Postdoctoral Fellow)
A St. Louis native, Mike spent his undergraduate years at Princeton University, while also doing summer research at Washington University, before becoming a laboratory technician studying antibody receptors. He brought his interests in receptor binding and signaling to the Washington University graduate program, where he studied the roles of integrins and their ligands in development. Mike found time to marry, sire offspring, and move to the suburbs before earning his PhD, and joining the Harbour Lab, where he is now in the middle of his postdoctoral fellowship. The students in the lab disparage his senescence. Karyotypic aberrations of chromosome 3 correlate with metastasis and the expression of an epithelioid phenotype in intraocular melanomas. Finding common genetic mutations and linking genotype to phenotype are major goals of Mike's project.
Solange Landreville
Solange, the newest member of the Harbour Lab, was born and raised in Matane (Quebec), Canada, near the shores of the St. Lawrence River. She graduated from Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières with a Bachelor's degree in Medical Biology and a Master's degree in Cellular Biophysics and Biology. While pursuing her PhD at the Université Laval in Cellular and Molecular Biology, Solange and Charles, her significant other, along with their families built their home in the Village of St. Wenceslas located between Montreal and Quebec. They have two black Labradors, Meo and Peggy. In her spare time, Solange enjoys playing tennis and volleyball and reading science fiction novels. Her project in the lab is identification and characterization of cancer stem cells in uveal melanoma.
Rachel Delston (Graduate Student)
Hailing from the nation's capital, Rachel is taking a break from Beltway politics to do her graduate work in the Harbour Lab. Rachel graduated from Oberlin College with a double major in Biology and Biochemistry and then spent a year working at UCSF. She loves going to restaurants and is enjoying eating her way through St. Louis. In her spare time, Rachel likes to feed the goats at Grant's Farm. Rachel is working on the retinoblastoma protein (Rb) which regulates cell division, differentiation, and apoptosis and is functionally inactive in virtually all tumors. It is unclear how Rb can have the contradictory role of regulating both the cell cycle and apoptosis. We hypothesize that differential phosphorylation of Rb controls these distinct physiologic roles.
Katie Matatall (Graduate Student)
Katie is our most recent addition to the family. She spent the first 10 years of her life in England in a town just outside of London. Then, deciding that life was too boring, Katie moved to a small rural town in Texas. After adjusting to the laid back American school system, she decided she liked this way much better and so went to the University of Texas in Austin to carry out her undergraduate training. Katie became interested in the Washington University graduate program after reading an ad on the back of a Happy Meal. When she's not in the lab, Katie enjoys HALO jumps, whitewater snorkeling, and puma baiting. Her research is focused on MITF, which is a key regulator of melanocyte differentiation. As melanoblasts differentiate, they must exit the cell cycle through the activation of Rb. To accomplish this, MITF bludgeons the Rb proteins until phosphates fall out of their pockets.
Lori Worley (Senior Technician)
Lori is a native St. Louisan who earned her BS in Biology from the University of Missouri-St. Louis before starting her research career at Washington University's Center for the Study of Nervous System Injury (CSNSI). After transiting through Radiation Oncology, she joined the Harbour Lab and is now its longest standing member. Lori has generated and maintains one of the largest collections in the world of primary melanocytes and melanoma cells, as well as two boys. Lori also manages a large program of genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic analyses of normal and cancer tissues.
Meghan Long (Research Tech II)
Meghan is the newest member of the Harbour Lab. She attended Hawaii Pacific University for the beginning of her undergraduate career. While on the beach, she married Drew, her high school sweetheart, a United States Marine. After getting island fever, they returned to Illinois. Meghan completed her degree at SIUE and, shortly after, obtained an internship at Pfizer Global Research and Development where her radiant personality and good looks landed her a contracting position. She now has 2 (canine) boys, Simba and Steel, who chew up most of her spare time and her couch. Meghan performs gene expression profiling of ocular melanomas by real-time PCR on samples from the United States, Canada, Europe and elsewhere. The goal of her project is to optimize and validate our molecular test that predicts metastatic risk in ocular melanoma.
Mel
- Position Title: Harbour Lab Mascot
- About: Mel is an Ophthalmosaurus from the late Jurassic period.