Congrats Dr. Sanjana Thosar!

Sanjana Thosar successfully defended her dissertation yesterday, earning her PhD! Sanjana’s dissertation, “Oxidative guanine base damage plays a dual role in regulating productive ALT-associated homology directed repair” was the culmination of five years of dedication and tenacity. This work demonstrated that targeted 8oxoG lesions at telomeres upregulates the hallmarks of the alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) pathway and homologous recombination in ALT, but not in telomerase expressing, cancer cells. However, when these lesions occur in the G2 cell cycle phase, the ALT replisome is impaired during ALT-mediated DNA synthesis.

Sanjana has a first author paper under review at Molecular Cell, and is second author on Ryan Barnes’ NSMB article. She has been selected for talks at the EMGS and the GRC annual meetings, as well as at the GSP mini retreat and the BGSA symposium here at Pitt.

As well as being a productive scientist, Sanjana has been a great friend to many during her time in Pittsburgh. She has been an awesome lab mate and a leader in her cohort. She will surely be missed, but we are so excited to see what great science comes from her in the future! Sanjana plans to find a position in industry in Boston and is currently job hunting.