Members – Hiroaki Kiyokawa Lab

Principal Investigator

Hiroaki Kiyokawa, MD, PhD

kiyokawa@northwestern.edu

Dr. Kiyokawa obtained MD and PhD from Osaka University in Osaka, Japan, and moved to New York to conduct postdoctoral research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Subsequently he founded an independent lab at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in 1997 and moved the lab to Northwestern in 2005. He has been Professor of Pharmacology and Pathology since 2008. As a basic scientist with clinical experience as an endocrine physician, Dr. Kiyokawa’s long-term goal is to apply basic research in his lab to therapeutics against human diseases. With broad expertise in mouse genetics, cell biology and biochemistry, his lab has investigated in vivo control of cell cycle regulators such as CDK4, the CDK inhibitor p27Kip1, the CDK-activating CDC25 phosphatases and several cell cycle-regulatory ubiquitination enzymes, and developed genetically engineered mouse models such as p27-, CDK4- and CDC25A-knockout mice. His collaborative team with Dr. Jun Yin at Georgia State University developed a novel ubiquitination substrate profiling method, Orthogonal Ubiquitin Transfer (OUT). Dr. Kiyokawa has been funded by NCI, NICHD, NIGMS, DOD and American Cancer Society, and has been serving at several NIH study sections associated with cancer biology and therapeutics, including MCT2, BMCT-C, CAMP and MONC.

DR. KIYOKAWA FACULTY PROFILE

Asia Owais, MBBS, MS

Asia earned her MD from Dow Medical College, Karachi, Pakistan. She is currently pursuing a MS in Neurobiology from the Graduate School, Northwestern University. Her research focuses on studying the substrates of ubiquitin ligase, E6-AP relevant to Angelman Syndrome and Autism Spectrum Disorder using iPSC derived neurons.

AsiaOwais2018@u.northwestern.edu

Maysa Shemmiyeva, MD

Maysa earned her MD from International Kazakh-Turkish University named after Khoja Ahmet Yassawi Faculty of Medicine and completed her residency in General Surgery. She is currently PGY-1 at Valley Health Hospital. She joined the Kiyokawa lab in 2019 and is interested in targeting chaperone-associated ubiquitination inhibitor BAG2 in Tripe Negative Breast Cancer.

maysa.shemmiyeva@northwestern.edu

Cade Brittain

Cade earned his BA from Lake Forest College studying Neuroscience and Chemistry. His current research focuses on biochemically analyzing the UBE3A/E6AP ubiquitin ligase relevant to Angelman Syndrome, Autism Spectrum Disorder and viral oncogenesis. He plans to pursue a MD/PhD degree in the near future.

cade.brittain@northwestern.edu

Xianpeng Liu, PhD

Xianpeng earned a PhD in molecular genetics from Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He worked in Kiyokawa lab as a postdoc until 2017 and played a leading role in developing the OUT technology in collaboration with Jun Yin lab at Georgia State University. He is currently Research Assistant Professor of Surgery, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University. Xianpeng investigates biological responses to lung transplantation, while he continues collaboration with Dr. Kiyokawa.

Xianpeng.liu@northwestern.edu

Alison Rogozinski

Alison earned her BS in Biomedical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. While she works in Kiyokawa lab, she is pursuing a MS degree at Illinois Institute of Technology. Her current research is focused on the roles of ubiquitination enzymes in human cancers and therapeutic interventions. Alison plans to pursue a PhD degree in biomedical sciences.

alison.rogozinski@northwestern.edu