Nilamani Jena
Nilamani Jena, Ph.D., is a Senior Project Scientist in the Department of Hematology and Oncology. His graduate and postdoctoral studies focused on the molecular pathogenesis of human hematologic malignancies. As a graduate student with Dr. Carlo Croce, he identified a novel pathway of regulation of the BCL-2 antiapoptotic protein via phosphorylation. As a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. George Daley, he demonstrated a specific role for Cyclin D2 in transformation and proliferation of BCR-ABL1-transformed B lymphoid cells. In his subsequent work as a postdoctoral fellow and now as a Senior Project Scientist in the research group of Dr. Rick Van Etten at UC Irvine, he has gained expertise on study of lymphoid development, hematopoietic stem cell isolation, retrovirus mediated gene transfer, bone marrow transplantation, analysis of development of leukemia in mice, and treatment of mice with leukemia with experimental therapy. He also has extensive experience in recombinant DNA techniques, in vitro cell culture, production of recombinant retrovirus, analysis of cells using FACS, analysis of proteins by immunoblotting.