Research thoughts by:

Ignaty Leshchiner

Research Program

7/7/2026

Distant tumor sites often respond to treatment and grow at varying rates, which suggests multiple resistance mechanisms evolving at the same time in one patient. Understanding subclonal dynamics and relationships is key for identifying and studying independently resistant cell subpopulations and their deferential response to chemo-, immuno- or targeted therapy. My lab develops methodologies to discover and monitor evolution of multiple simultaneous resistance mechanisms in a patient, study short- and long-term dynamics and phenotypes of subclonal cell populations before and during treatment, early response detection and understanding the differential treatment response of subclones, including dynamics of response and recurrence under drug pressure and transcriptional changes upon drug exposure.