News
March 2024
- Maria was awarded the Carl Storm Underrepresented Minority Fellowship to attend the 2023 Gordon Research Conference on Autophagy in Stress, Development and Disease. Congrats Maria!
February 2024
- The Kritzer lab was awarded a 2024 Sanofi iAward, funding a new collaborative project in Alzheimer’s disease research!
- The Kritzer lab is on a roll, with over 10 manuscripts published or in submission in the last year. Go Team Kritzer!
January 2024
- Congrats to Nefeli for her paper “Cell penetration of oxadiazole-containing macrocycles” just published in RSC Chemical Biology! The paper describes an exciting collaboration with the Yudin Lab at University of Toronto examining how oxadiazole groups within small cyclic peptides affect cell penetration.
December 2023
- The Kritzer lab celebrated an amazing year with food, laughter, and holiday cheer!
- Congratulations to Dr. Jing Wang for defending her PhD thesis!
- Congrats to Bryan for his paper in ChemComm “Engineered fluorogenic HaloTag ligands for turn-on labelling in live cells”! The paper describes Bryan’s dye engineering campaign to produce turn-on fluorescent dyes with improved properties for labeling live mammalian cells.
November 2023
- Welcome to new graduate student Madison!
- Congrats to Francini for her new paper in the Journal of Chemical Information & Modeling describing the computational design and real-world evaluation of cyclic peptides that bind Keap1! This was a collaboration with Francini’s co-PI Prof. Yu-Shan Lin and crystallographer Dr. Marcus Hartmann.
October 2023
- Congrats to Maria for winning a poster prize at the Charlton Poster Competition!
September 2023
- The Kritzer Lab had its first-ever AppleFest! We picked apples, played games, and enjoyed the beautiful sights and tastes of fall in New England.
- Welcome to new undergraduate researcher Estafania Morales!
June 2023
- Congrats to Jing Wang for being awarded a Poster Prize at the 2023 Northeast Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society!
- Welcome to new undergraduate researchers Bennett and Tom! And, congratulations to Bennett for being named a 2023 Laidlaw Scholar!
- Congrats to Dr. Francini Fonseca-Lopez for defending her PhD thesis!
- Congrats to Kirsten for her new paper in ChemComm describing artificial nucleotides with boronic acids that enhance cytosolic penetration for antisense oligonucleotides! A collaboration with the Islam group at University of Pittsburgh.
May 2023
- Congrats to Amarachi, Imani, and Maria for passing their second-year Research Topics and Qualifying Exams!
March 2023
- Welcome to new undergraduate researcher Clara!
February 2023
- Congrats to Nefeli for her new paper in ChemBioChem describing how length, base composition, and secondary structure affect cell penetration for drug-like oligonucleotides!
- The Kritzer Lab has been awarded a Maximizing Investigator's Research Award from the NIH! This 5-year, $3M award will fund all of the basic drug discovery science in the lab.
January 2023
- Watch Nefeli explain one of her research projects, part of the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society's Spotlight Series!
December 2022
- The Kritzer Lab holiday party was full of laughter and light. We are so lucky to have such a great community of scientists (and kiddos and doggos)!
November 2022
- The Kritzer Lab celebrates new members and November birthdays with Brazilian food!
- Welcome to new graduate student Ben!
- Congrats to Francini and Bryan! They both won poster awards at the Chemistry and Biology of Peptides GRC!
October 2022
- Congrats to Nefeli for her poster award at the 2022 Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society meeting!
- Welcome to new MD/PhD student Maria!
September 2022
- Welcome to new undergraduate researcher Joanet!
August 2022
- Congrats to Hawley, Mia, Nefeli, and Tiffany for their new paper in JACS describing stapled peptides that inhibit the autophagy protein GABARAP! A collaboration with the Weiergräber group at Forschungszentrum Jülich and Zhen Lu in the Bast Laboratory at MD Anderson Cancer Center!
- Congrats to undergraduate researcher Mia Chung for her invited talk at the Beckman Symposium!
July 2022
- The Kritzer Lab held our annual summer Lake Day. We have an incredible group of people who love to work, learn, grow, and play together!
June 2022
- Welcome to new Kritzer Lab postdoctoral researcher Allie!
May 2022
- Congrats to undergraduate researcher and Beckman Scholar Mia for her undergraduate thesis defense!
February 2022
- The Kritzer Lab held a belated but very happy holiday party! With lots of gifts, games, and laughter, it felt amazing to spend some social time together!
January 2022
- Congrats to Kirsten, Nefeli, Livia, and Jiaxing on their new paper in ACS Chemical Biology describing how to measure cytosolic and nuclear penetration for oligonucleotide therapeutics! A collaboration with industrial groups at Eli Lilly and Co. and Wave Life Sciences!
November 2021
- Welcome to new Kritzer Lab graduate students Amarachi and Imani!
- The Kritzer Lab focusing on three important S's: Sushi, Science, and Soba noodles!
October 2021
- Joshua was quoted in a Tufts Now article on the Tufts CELT Equity and Inclusion Fellows workshop, which pushed professors to find ways to combat systemic racism in undergraduate classrooms.
September 2021
- The Kritzer Lab held our annual Retreat! The focus of the day was why we do what we do. We built a map of all the projects in the lab and then brainstormed new directions. We each brought meaningful quotes and we used them to discuss our motivations in science and in life. We ate. We drank. We bowled. We laughed.
- Congrats to Jen, Bryan, Charles, Kirsten, and Rob on their new paper in JACS describing novel staples and the unusual beta-hairpins they can help stabilize! Brief intro here.
- Welcome to new undergraduate researcher Emma!
August 2021
- Congrats to Dr. Kirsten Deprey for defending her thesis!
July 2021
- Kritzer Lab Lake day is back! Kayaks were paddled, games were played, and laughs were shared.
- Congrats to Kaley on her new paper in ACS Chemical Biology describing a method for measuring and comparing cell penetration for large combinatorial libraries!
June 2021
- Welcome to new undergraduate researcher Adam!
May 2021
- Congrats to Dr. Kaley Mientkiewicz for defending her thesis!
- Congrats to Tiffany Tsang for completing her Master's degree!
- Congrats to undergraduate researchers Cassie Cancemi, Ravi Bajpai, and Cameron Cummings for completing their Senior Honors Theses!
April 2021
- Congrats to Kirsten for her paper describing the solution to a mystery: HaloTag forms an intramolecular disulfide, now online at Bioconjuate Chemistry!
March 2021
- Congrats to undergrad Mia for being named a 2021-2022 Beckman Scholar!
- Congrats to postdoc Bryan for earning an F32 postdoctoral fellowship!
February 2021
- Congrats to Nefeli and Jing for their contributions to a collaborative paper led by the Millward Lab on autophagy-inhibiting peptides!
November 2020
- Welcome to new Kritzer lab graduate students Maple, Tien and Zhengwen!
October 2020
- Congrats to Rob, Livia, Hawley, Jen, and Yang! Their article was selected for the cover of the October 1 issue of ChemBioChem!
August 2020
- Congrats to Kirsten on her collaborative project with the Garner lab, just published in European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. One of many collaborations with academic scientists and drug developers!!
- Congrats to Kirsten and Nefeli on their critical review on assays for measuring cell penetration of RNA therapeutics , just published in Nucleic Acids Research!
- The Kritzer lab receives an NSF grant to explore Peptide Stapling with Conformationally Constrained Building Blocks!
June 2020
- The Kritzer lab hires Hawley Brown as a Research Technician!
May 2020
- Congrats to Rob, Livia, Hawley, Jen, and Yang for their new paper describing stapled peptide LC3 inhibitors, now out in ChemBioChem!
- Congrats to Rob, Livia, Jing, and our collaborators in the Frank Group at Dana-Farber for their paper on STAT3 inhibitors in Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry!
April 2020
- Congrats to Kirsten, whose collaborative effort with the Craik Group and Dr. Conan Wang was just published in ACS Chemical Biology. The first of many collaborative CAPA papers in the works!
March 2020
- Congrats to Kritzer lab undergraduate researcher Cassandra Cancemi, who was just awarded a 2020 Goldwater Scholarship! Go Cassie!!!
- Congrats to MD/PhD student Dr. Robert Cerulli, on completing your thesis work and on becoming a new father!! Rob's unique online thesis defense was profiled by Tufts Now, and the after-party had a few surprises!
January 2020
- Rob's review article on phosphotyrosine isosteres made the front cover of the January 28 issue of Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry!
- Our Chloroalkane Penetration Assay (CAPA), which helps measure how much of a drug molecule gets into the cytoplasm of living cells, continues to find applications in industry and academia!
- See recent work by Stephen Frye at UNC using CAPA to profile cell penetration of degrader molecules, and a recent profile of this CAPA application at In the Pipeline!
December 2019
- K-lab holiday party celebrates all our accomplishments in 2019, and our exciting plans for 2020! Here are most of us, assembled for mandatory merriment:
- And here we are with lab alumni!!!
- Kritzer Lab members during a 2019 holiday event
November 2019
- Congrats to Rob for his review article Phosphotyrosine Isosteres: Past, Present and Future, just published in Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry.
- Welcome to new Kritzer lab graduate students Nefeli and Tiffany!
September 2019
- Welcome to new postdoctoral researcher Dr. Poulami Majumder!!
August 2019
- End-of-summer lab outing to celebrate our accomplishments, and to wish Jen, Ashleigh, Livia, Lauren, and Eriko the best of luck as they continue their amazing careers!
July 2019
- Our annual K-Lab Lake Day was a great success!
May 2019
- Congrats to Livia, Santosh and Kamlesh for their new paper in ACS Infectious Diseases on the discovery of small-molecule inhibitors of a bacterial virulence factor! A collaboration with the Murphy Lab at U. Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine.
April 2019
- Congrats to Hawley for being named a Tufts Summer Scholar! And Congrats to Cassie and Ravi for both being named Laidlaw Scholars!!
- Congrats to Kirsten for her excellent review on methods for measuring cytosolic localization of biotherapeutics. A collaboration with the Pluckthun group!
- And congrats to Rob for a thoughtful Viewpoint article on the engineering of multidomain antibodies against flu!
March 2019
- The Kritzer lab has their first-ever retreat! We talked about our current and future projects, what makes us passionate about science, and what is important to us outside of lab. And we had a blast questing together at Boda Borg!
January 2019
- Congrats to Ashleigh and co-first author from the Lin Lab, Jiayuan, for their just-accepted paper in Biophysical Journal. The latest in our ongoing collaboration with the Lin Lab!
- Welcome to new undergraduate researcher Cameron!
December 2018
- The K-lab celebrates the holidays. 2018 was awesome and 2019 will be even better!!
November 2018
- Welcome to new graduate student Jiaxing!
September 2018
- Welcome to new undergraduate researchers Hawley, Ravi, Erika, and Cassie! Every question you ask makes us better scientists, so ask away!!
- Congrats to Francini for earning an NIH F31 Predoctoral Fellowship!!
August 2018
- Congrats to Leila, Kirsten, and Matt for their fantastic work on the chloroalkane penetration assay! Their work was just accepted at JACS!!
May 2018
- Congrats to Leila for her review in Angewandte Chemie, entitled Getting in: emerging methods and design principles for cell-penetrant peptides! Great work on a timely subject.
- Congrats to Lauren for being awarded an Astronaut Scholarship!!
April 2018
- Congrats to Lauren for being awarded the 2018 R.M. Karapetoff Cobb Chemistry Prize!
- Congrats to Eriko for being named a 2018-2019 Tufts Beckman Scholar!
- Congrats to Leila for winning the GSAS Award for Outstanding Academic Scholarship!
March 2018
- Leila defended her PhD! Congratulations to Dr. Peraro!!
- Congrats to Ashleigh and to our collaborators in the Pentelute Lab and Lin Lab for their just-published paper in J. Phys. Chem. B!
January 2018
- Welcome to new postdoc Dr. Jennifer Pace!
December 2017
- The Kritzer lab celebrates the holidays with food, drinks and fun!
November 2017
- Welcome to new graduate students Francini, Kevin and Jing, and to new undergraduate researcher Hawley! We are thrilled you are part of the Kritzer lab!
September 2017
- Congrats to Robert Cerulli for earning an F30 NIH Fellowship! Way to go Rob!
- Congrats to Alissa, Kaley, Robyn, and collaborators Jenna and Charlie for an excellent paper on EHD1 inhibitors, now online at Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry! Great work!
June 2017
The cover of the June 14 issue of JACS features our autophagy-inducing peptides!
May 2017
- Our article on stapled peptides that induce autophagy was selected as the ACS Editor's Choice for May 9, 2017!
April 2017
- Congrats to Leila, Kamlesh and Ashleigh for their article on stapled peptides that induce autophagy just accepted at JACS!
- Welcome to new undergraduate researchers Shannon Geary, Eriko Koide, Ben Orr, and Lauren Varanese!
March 2017
- Alissa Kamens defends her thesis entitled "Conformational Restriction of the NPF Motif to Target EHD1 and Endocytic Recycling." Congrats Dr. Kamens!
February 2017
- Congrats to Tim and Mike for their Methods in Molecular Biology protocol for using LoopFinder!
December 2016
- Welcome to new graduate student Kirsten Deprey!
September 2016
- Congrats to Tim, Mike, and Kamlesh -- their paper was just accepted in JACS!
August 2016
- Congrats to Tim and Leila for their recently published Methods in Enzymology paper!
- The Kritzer Lab celebrates another amazing year with chips, grad students, salsa, postdocs and guac.
July 2016
- Welcome to new postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Yang Mei!
May 2016
- Michael Bird and Caitlin Keenan defended their senior theses, both earning Highest Thesis Honors. Mike and Kate, your futures are bright!
April 2016
- Tim Siegert defends his thesis entitled "Identification of Loop Mediated Protein-Protein Interactions and Design of Cyclic Peptide Locked Loop Inhibitors." Congrats Dr. Siegert!
February 2016
- Welcome to new postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Kamlesh Makwana!
December 2015
- Amanda Aldous defends her thesis entitled "Metal Binding and Catalytic Activity of Macrocyclic Peptides." Congrats Dr. Aldous!
November 2015
- Welcome to three new graduate students, Ashleigh Cummings, Kaley Mientkiewicz, and Livia Shehaj!!
September 2015
- Welcome to Rob Cerulli, a new MD/PhD student in the Kritzer Lab!
August 2015
- Congrats to Mike Bird for winning the ACS COMP division's Outstanding Undergraduate Research award at the National ACS Meeting!!
May 2015
- The Kritzer Lab, sans undergrads, takes a well-earned break to relax and celebrate!
April 2015
- Congrats to Tim Siegert and Mike Bird for winning awards from NESACS at this year's Northeastern Student Chemistry Research Conference!
- Joshua is elected as a Member of the Molecular Microbiology graduate program at the Sackler School for Biomedical Sciences!
March 2015
- Congrats to Amanda Aldous for winning the Tufts Graduate Research Competition!
October 2014
- Congrats to Dr. Justin Quartararo, the first PhD student graduating from the Kritzer Lab!!!
- Congrats to Justin, Matt and Leila and collaborators Dr. Yu, Prof. Lin, and Prof. Baleja! Their paper is in press at Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry!
September 2014
- Congrats to Prof. Jason Gavenonis, a former postdoc of the Kritzer group, on starting a faculty position at Dickinson College.
July 2014
- Congrats to Matt, Amanda and Kosh for their careful structural analysis of metal-bound and unliganded cyclic peptides! Their paper is in press at Tetrahedron!
- Congrats to Alissa, Robyn, and our collaborators at the Sackler School for their development of cyclic peptide inhibitors of the EH domain of EHD1. Their paper is in press at Biochemistry!
- The Kritzer Lab takes some time out to celebrate being so awesome!
June 2014
- Congrats to Jason and Nick for their description of helical peptides that inhibit the protein Hsp90, in press at Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry!
- Congrats to Kosh and Amanda for their second paper on constrained analogs of the ATCUN motif, in press at Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry!
May 2014
- Congrats to Brad, Jason, Tim and Matt for their implementation of LoopFinder, an algorithm for investigating loop-mediated protein-protein interactions. This work is in press at Nature Chemical Biology!
December 2013
- Welcome to new postdoctoral researcher Dr. Shaun Cote, and new graduate student Leila Peraro!
August 2013
- Congrats to Santosh for his excellent contribution to ChemBioChem!
June 2013
- Congratulations to Justin Quartararo, who received an NIH Predoctoral fellowship! Great job Justin!
May 2013
- Joshua receives Tufts' ROUTE award, the highest award given to junior faculty at Tufts in recognition of exceptional teaching.
March 2013
- Congratulations to Sara Khosrowjerdi for her selection as a Tufts Beckman Scholar!
February 2013
- Congrats to Kosh and Amanda for their excellent contribution to Inorganic Chemistry!
December 2012
- The Kritzer Lab celebrates its third year with a holiday party!
June 2012
- Welcome to new postdoctoral researcher Dr. Robyn Eisert!
May 2012
- Congratulations to Linda Le and Matt Davis for defending their Senior Honors Theses!
January 2012
- Welcome to new undergraduate researchers Sara Khosrowjerdi, Brad Sheneman, Austin Hsieh, Lily Barnard, and Erica Mason!
November 2011
- Welcome to new graduate students Angelo Bautista, Albert Gjeluci and Tim Siegert!
July 2011
- Welcome to postdoctoral researcher Kosh Neupane!
June 2011
- The Kritzer Lab celebrates its second year with a lab barbecue!
May 2011
- Welcome to undergraduate researchers Elise Hsu and Linda Le!
- Matt Davis is named a Tufts Summer Scholar for 2011. Congratulations Matt!
December 2010
- Welcome to graduate students Alissa Kamens and Amanda Aldous and undergraduate researcher Pianpian Wu!
October 2010
- Welcome to postdoctoral researcher Dr. Jonathan Bock!
- Prof. Kritzer is named as one of the recipients of the 2010 NIH New Innovator Award! This program is intended "to support exceptionally creative new investigators who propose highly innovative projects that have the potential for unusually high impact."
- Check out our video, "What Makes a Good Scientist?" Produced by summer visitor Olivia Goolkasian.
- Justin is named a GAANN Fellow for 2010/2011. Congratulations Justin!
- The Kritzer lab is now a member of the Structural and Chemical Biology Program of the Tufts Medical Center Cancer Center.
- Jason is named a TEACRS fellow. Congratulations Jason!
- Welcome to undergraduate researcher Steve Smith and postdoctoral researcher Jason Gavenonis!
August 2010
- The Kritzer lab celebrates its first year with a lab barbecue!
November 2009
- The Kritzer lab welcomes graduate students Rob Schuster and Justin Quartararo!
- The Kritzer lab welcomes undergraduate researchers Hayley Marcus and Matt Davis!
- Prof. Kritzer is named as one of five recipients of the Smith Family Awards for Excellence in Biomedical Research! The award's mission is "to launch the careers of outstanding biomedical researchers with the ultimate goal of achieving medical breakthroughs."
September 2009
- Paper detailing the construction of genetically expressed cyclic peptide libraries and application to models of Parkinson's disease is published in Nature Chemical Biology.
- This work was recently highlighted by:
- Faculty of 1000 Biology identifies it as a "Must Read"
- Nature Chemical Biology News and Views
- Michael J. Fox Foundation Parkinson's in the News
- Michael J. Fox Foundation Q&A with Joshua Kritzer
- NIH-NINDS Press Release
- Genome Technology In the Clinic
- Whitehead Institute Press Release
Summer 2009
- Check out a short documentary film featuring Prof. Kritzer discussing his postdoctoral research, applying new technologies to investigate the causes of Parkinson's disease: Exploring Parkinson's disease in Yeast Using Cyclic Peptides