Molecular Biology Program

The Agnel Sfeir Lab

Agnel Sfeir, PhD

PaineWebber Chair in Cancer Genetics

Chromosomes are the fundamental structural units of our genome. The Sfeir lab seeks to understand basic chromosome biology and how their mismanagement manifests in disease. Our research is focused on three major areas: telomere maintenance, nuclear DNA repair, and mitochondrial DNA replication and repair. A number of projects in the lab address fundamental questions related to telomere maintenance and how telomere dysfunction impacts cancer. In addition, we study an ancient yet error-prone DNA repair pathway, termed micro-homology mediated end-joining, and focus on polymerase theta, a key enzyme underlying mutagenic repair. Lastly, we investigate replication and repair of mitochondrial genomes and explore mitochondrial-nuclear crosstalk in response to mitochondrial DNA stress.

www.sfeirlab.com

Research Projects

Featured News

Exploring the ‘Forgotten Genome’ and More: At Work with Molecular Biologist Agnel Sfeir

Meet molecular biologist Agnel Sfeir, who joined SKI's Molecular Biology Program in March 2021.

Publications Highlights

Brambati A#, Sacco O#, Porcells A#, Heyza J, Kareh M, Schmidt JC, Sfeir A. RHINO directs MMEJ to repair DNA breaks in mitosis Science. 2023 Jul 13:eadh3694. doi: 10.1126/science.adh3694. PMID: 37440612

Tigano M, Tremblay-Belzile S, Vargas DC, Fu Y, Sfeir A* Nuclear sensing of mitochondrial DNA breaks enhances immune surveillance Nature. 2021 Feb 4: doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03269-w

Mateos-Gomez PA, Gong F, Nair N, Miller KM, Lazzerini-Denchi E, Sfeir A*. (2015) Mammalian Polymerase Theta Promotes Alternative-NHEJ and Suppresses Recombination. Nature. Feb 12;518(7538):254-7. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14157

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People

Agnel Sfeir, PhD

PaineWebber Chair in Cancer Genetics

The Sfeir Lab investigates pathways that ensure genome fidelity and plasticity.
PhD, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Texas (2006)
Post-Doc, The Rockefeller University, New York (2011)

Members

Madison Rex

Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Student

Mingxuan (Anthony) Wei
Visiting Master's Student

Lab Alumni

Alessandra Brambati
Senior Research Scientist

Alejandro Friedman

Research Assistant

Julius Wu

Intern

Lab Affiliations

Achievements

Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovator Award
Human Frontier Science Program Young Investigator Award
V-Foundation Scholar
Pew-Stewart Scholar for Cancer Research
NIH Director’s New Innovator Award

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation Award
Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators
Mallinckrodt Scholar Award

Open Positions

To learn more about available postdoctoral opportunities, please visit our Career Center

To learn more about compensation and benefits for postdoctoral researchers at MSK, please visit Resources for Postdocs

Disclosures

Doctors and faculty members often work with pharmaceutical, device, biotechnology, and life sciences companies, and other organizations outside of MSK, to find safe and effective cancer treatments, to improve patient care, and to educate the health care community.

MSK requires doctors and faculty members to report (“disclose”) the relationships and financial interests they have with external entities. As a commitment to transparency with our community, we make that information available to the public.

Agnel Sfeir discloses the following relationships and financial interests:

Repare Therapeutics
Equity; Intellectual Property Rights; Professional Services and Activities

The information published here is a complement to other publicly reported data and is for a specific annual disclosure period. There may be differences between information on this and other public sites as a result of different reporting periods and/or the various ways relationships and financial interests are categorized by organizations that publish such data.

This page and data include information for a specific MSK annual disclosure period (January 1, 2023 through disclosure submission in spring 2024). This data reflects interests that may or may not still exist. This data is updated annually.

Learn more about MSK’s COI policies here. For questions regarding MSK’s COI-related policies and procedures, email MSK’s Compliance Office at [email protected].

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