Jason Hanna

My lab studies microRNAs and angiosarcomas which are aggressive vascular sarcomas from blood and lymphatic endothelial cells. Despite the extremely poor prognosis for patients, the genetic drivers and molecular mechanisms of these tumors remain unclear. In recent work, we found that Dicer1 and microRNAs may function as critical tumor suppressors. We have gone on to generate additional tumor models investigating other genes known to be altered in patients. We leverage these genetic models to study tumor initiation, progression, and metastasis in vivo and in cell line models. We aim to 1) discover the genetic drivers and critical microRNAs involved in angiosarcoma development, 2) identify the key mediators of angiosarcoma metastasis, and 3) design and evaluate precision therapeutics to benefit patients of this devastating and understudied disease.

Hanna J, Garcia M, Lardennois A, Leavey P, Maglic D, Fagnan A, Go J, Roach J, Wang Y, Finkelstein D, Hatley M. PAX3-FOXO1 drives miR-486-5p and represses miR-221 contributing to pathogenesis of alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma. Oncogene 37, 1991–2007 (2018).

Drummond C*, Hanna J*, Garcia M, Devine D, Heyrana A, Finkelstein D, Rehg J, Hatley M. Hedgehog pathway drives fusion-negative rhabdomyosarcoma initiated from non-myogenic endothelial progenitors. Cancer Cell 33, 108-124 (2018). [*co-first authors].

Hanna J, Drummond C, Garcia M, Go J, Finkelstein D, Rehg J, Hatley M. Biallelic Dicer1 loss mediated by aP2-Cre drives angiosarcoma. Cancer Research 77, 6109-6118, (2017).

Hanna J, Garcia M, Go J, Finkelstein D, Kodali K, Pagala X, Peng J, Hatley M. PAX7 is a required target for microRNA-206 induced differentiation of fusion-negative rhabdomyosarcoma. Cell Death and Disease 7, e2256 (2016).

Agarwal S, Hanna J, Sherman J, Figueroa, Rimm D. Quantitative Assessment of miR-34a as an Independent Prognostic Marker in Breast Cancer. British Journal of Cancer 112, 61–68 (2015).

Hanna J, Hahn, L, Agarwal S, Rimm D. In situ Measurement of miR-205 in Malignant Melanoma Tissue Supports its Role as a Tumor Suppressor microRNA. Laboratory Investigation 92, 1390-1397 (2012).

Genovese G, Ergun A, Shukla S, Campos B, Hanna J, Ghosh P, Quayle S, Rai D, Colla K, Ying H, Wu C, Sarkar S, Xiao Y, Zhang J, Zhang H, Kwong L, Dunn K, Wiedemeyer W, Brennan C, Zheng H, Rimm D, Collins J, Chin L. MicroRNA Regulatory Network Inference Identifies miR-34a as a Novel Regulator of TGF beta Signaling in GBM. Cancer Discovery 2, 736-749 (2012).

Hanna J, Wimberly H, Kumar S, Slack F, Agarwal S, Rimm D. Quantitative Analysis of microRNAs in Tissue Microarrays by in situ Hybridization. Biotechniques 52, 235-245 (2012).

Scott K, Nogueira C, Heffernan T, van Doorn R, Dhakal S, Hanna J, Min C, Jaskelioff M, Xiao Y, Wu C, Cameron L, Perry S, Zeid R, Feinberg T, Kim M, Vande Woude G, Granter S, Bosenberg M, Chu G, DePinho R, Rimm D, Chin L. Proinvasion Metastasis Drivers in Early-Stage Melanoma are Oncogenes. Cancer Cell 20, 92-103 (2011).

Hanna J, Bordeaux J, Rimm D, Agarwal S. The Function, Proteolytic Processing, and Histopathology of Met in Cancer. Adv. Cancer Res.103:1-23 (2009).