Vito Rebecca
Cancer metastasis, therapy resistance, health disparities
Assistant Professor
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Research Overview
The Rebecca laboratory focuses on understanding genetic and non-genetic mechanisms of therapy resistance and metastasis leveraged by cancer cells, using acral lentiginous melanoma as a paradigm. Their particular focus is on stem cell-like tumor cell subpopulations of melanoma cells that “hijack” developmental signaling cassettes to drive transient metastatic and drug resistant cell states. Their studies encompass quantitative tools, genetic editing, molecular biology, in vivo patient-derived xenograft therapy trials and bioinformatic analyses to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of actionable vulnerabilities for stem cell-like subpopulations of cancer cells.
Selected Publications
- Robertson BM, Fane ME, Weeraratna AT, Rebecca VW. Determinants of resistance and response to melanoma therapy. Nature Cancer, 2024.
- Jagirdar K, Portuallo ME, Wei M, Wilhide M, Bravo Narula JA, Robertson BM, Alicea GM, Aguh C, Xiao M, Godok T, Fingerman D, Brown GS, Herlyn M, Elad VM, Guo X, Toska E, Zabransky DJ, Wubbenhorst B, Nathanson KL, Kwatra S, Goyal Y, Ji H, Liu Q, Rebecca VW. ERK hyperactivation serves as a unified mechanism of escape in intrinsic and acquired CDK4/6 inhibitor resistance in acral lentiginous melanoma. Oncogene, 2024.
- Alicea GM, Rebecca VW. Emerging strategies to treat rare and intractable subtypes of melanoma. Pigment Cell & Melanoma Research, 2020.
- Alicea GM, Rebecca VW, Goldman AR, Fane ME, Douglass SM, Behera R, Webster MR, Kugel CH, Ecker BL, Caino MC, Kossenkov AV, Tang HY, Frederick DT, Flaherty KT, Xu X, Liu Q, Gabrilovich DI, Herlyn M, Blair IA, Schug ZT, Speicher DW, Weeraratna AT. Changes in Aged Fibroblast Lipid Metabolism Induce Age-dependent Melanoma Cell Resistance to Targeted Therapy Via the Fatty Acid Transporter FATP2. Cancer Discovery, 2020.
- Rebecca VW, Nicastri MC, Fennelly C, Chude CI, Barber-Rotenberg JS, Ronghe A, McAfee Q, McLaughlin NP, Martorella A, Alicea GM, Lee JJ, Schuchter LM, Xu X, Herlyn M, Marmorstein R, Gimotty PA, Speicher DW, Winkler JD, Amaravadi RK. PPT1 promotes tumor growth and is the molecular target of chloroquine derivatives in cancer. Cancer Discovery, 2019.