Aleksandra Karolak, Ph.D.

626-218-4673
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Assistant Research Professor, Department of Hematologic Malignancies Translational Science and Division of Mathematical Oncology, Department of Computational and Quantitative Medicine
Location
Education & Experience
Degrees

  • 2015, Ph.D., Biophysical and Computational Chemistry, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida

  • 2000, M.Sc., Metal-Organic Chemistry, Adam Mickiewicz University, Posen, Poland

Professional Experience

  • 2019-present, Assistant Research Professor, Division of Mathematical Oncology, Department of Computational and Quantitative Medicine, and Department of Hematologic Malignancies Translational Science, Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope, Duarte, California

  • 2018-2019, H2020, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions and Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, COFUND postdoctoral fellowship, Genome Data Science, Institute for Research in Biomedicine,
    Barcelona, Spain

  • 2015-2018, Postdoctoral Researcher at Moffitt Cancer Center, Department of Integrated Mathematical Oncology, Tampa, Florida

Publications
Karolak A, Branciamore S, McCune JS, Lee PP, Rodin AS, Rockne RC. Concepts and applications of information theory to immuno-oncology (accepted, Trends in Cancer, 2021)
 
Karolak A, Supek F. Structural perspectives to somatic mutational signatures in cancer, BioRXiv DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.28.316794 (2020)
 
Damaghi M, Byrne S, Xu L, Tafreshi N, Fang B, Koomen JM, Karolak A, Chen T, Johnson J, Gallant ND, Marusyk A, Gillies RJ. Collagen production and niche engineering: a novel strategy for cancer cells to survive acidosis and evolve. BioRXiv 711978; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/711978 (2019)
 
Karolak A, Poonja S, Markov DA, McCawley LA, Rejniak KA. Morphophenotypic classification of tumor organoids as an indicator of drug exposure and penetration potential, Plos.Comp.Biol. 15(7): e1007214 (2019)
 
Khabibullin A, Karolak A, Budzevich M, Mclaughlin M, Morse D, Woods L. Structure and properties of DOTA-chelated radiopharmaceuticals within the 225Ac decay pathway, Med.Chem.Comm.,6;9(7), p155 (2018)
 
Karolak A, Markov DA, McCawley LJ, Rejniak KA. Toward personalized computational oncology: from spatial models of tumor spheroids to organoids to tissues, J.R.Soc Interface, 15:20170703 (2018)
 
Karolak A, Rejniak KA. Micropharmacology: an in silico approach for assessing drug efficacy within a tumor tissue, Bull. Math. Biol. p1 (2018)
 
Nizzero S, Alfonso JC, Alvarez-Arenas A, Mirzaev I, Zervantonakis I, Lewin T, Rishi A, Piretto E,  Joshi T, Santiago DN, Karolak A, Howard R, Enderling H, Karreth FA, Torres-Roca J. Overcoming non-small cell lung cancer radiation resistance by modulating the tumor-immune ecosystem, BioRXiv https://doi.org/10.1101/458372 (2018)
 
Karolak A, Estrella V, Chen T, Huynh AS, Morse Dl, Rejniak KA. Targeting imaging agents efficacy linked to tumor tissue topological heterogeneity via single-cell micro-pharmacological modeling, Scientific Reports, 8 (1), p3638 (2018)
 
Karolak A, Huffstutler B, Khan Z, Rejniak KA. Assessment of patient-specific efficacy of chemo- and targeted-therapies: a micro pharmacology approach, NIH/NCI Handbook of Mathematical Methods in Cancer Biology, BioRxiv, doi.org/10.1101/236653 (2017)
 
Mukherjee S, Karolak A, Renaudineau Y, Debant M, Buscaglia P, Mignen O, Guida WC, Brooks WH. Molecular dynamics simulations of membrane-bound STIM1 to investigate conformational changes during STIM1 activation upon calcium release, J. Chem. Inf. Model. 57 (2), p335 (2017)
 
Walker R, Navas PE, Friedman SH, Galliani S, Karolak A, Macfarlane F, Noble R, Poleszczuk J, Russell S, Rejniak KA, Shahmoradi A, Ziebell F, Brayer J, Abate-Daga D, Enderling H. Enhancing synergy of CAR T cell therapy and oncolytic virus therapy for pancreatic cancer BioRXiv DOI: 10.1101/055988 (2016)
 
Word TA, Karolak A, Cioce C, van der Vaart A, RW.Larsen RW. Using photoacoustic calorimetry to study the cis to trans photoisomerization of the [Ru(II)(2,2’-bipyridine)2(H2O)2]2+ complex in aqueous solution, Comment. Inorg. Chem. 36, p343 (2016)
 
Karolak A, van der Vaart A. Molecular dynamics simulations of 5-hydroxycytosine damaged DNA J. Phys. Chem. B, 120, p42 (2016)
 
Karolak A, van der Vaart A. BII stability and base step flexibility of N6-adenine methylated GATC motifs Biophys. Chem. 203, p22 (2015)
 
Word TA, Whittington CL, Karolak A, Kemp MT, Woodcock HL, van der Vaart A,  Larsen RW. Photoacoustic calorimetry study of ligand photorelease from the Ru(II)bis(2,2'-bipyridine)(6,6'-dimethyl-2,2'-bipyridine) complex in aqueous solution Chem. Phys. Lett. 619, p214 (2015)
 
Karolak A, van der Vaart A. Enhanced sampling simulations of DNA step parameters J. Comp. Chem. 35, 2297-2304 (2014)
 
Karolak A, van der Vaart A. Importance of local interactions for the ETS1 stability of inhibitory helix 1 Biophys. Chem. 165, p74 (2012)
 
Maciejewski H, Marciniec B, Gulinski J, Karolak A, .Skvortsov NK. From isothiocyanato- to silyl-nickel complexes Inorg. Chem. Comm. 5, p464 (2002)