The Piskounova Lab
Mechanisms of stress adaptation in metastasis and therapy resistance
We study how metastatic cancer cells survive oxidative, metabolic, and microenvironmental stress through translational remodeling, RNA biology, and adaptive signaling, and how these liabilities can be therapeutically targeted.
Selected Highlights
Now based in Boston at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School
Nature (2015) Oxidative Stress inhibits distant metastasis by human melanoma cells
Redox Biology (2024) Transcriptional Isoforms of NAD+ Kinase regulate oxidative stress resistance and melanoma metastasis
Nature Cancer (2024) Selenocysteine tRNA methylation promotes oxidative stress resistance in melanoma metastasis
Research Program
We investigate how cancer cells adapt to stress during metastatic progression and treatment response. Our work focuses on molecular mechanisms that allow disseminated tumor cells to survive hostile environments, reprogram translation, and acquire targetable dependencies.
Oxidative stress as a barrier and vulnerability in metastasis
How disseminated tumor cells survive redox stress during metastatic colonization
Translational remodeling under stress
How tRNA biology, codon usage and stress-responsive translation reshape metastatic plasticity and fitness
Targetable adaptive vulnerabilities
How stress-survival programs create therapeutic vulnerabilities in metastatic disease
About the Lab
Elena Piskounova, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. Building on foundational discoveries that identified oxidative stress as a barrier to metastasis, the lab studies how metastatic cancer cells adapt to oxidative and metabolic stress through RNA biology, translational control, and stress-response signaling. Our goal is to define mechanisms that matter in metastatic disease and therapy resistance and uncover vulnerabilities that can be therapeutically exploited.
Join The Lab
We are recruiting postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and research assistants interested in cancer biology, cancer metabolism, RNA biology, metastasis and therapy resistance. We welcome scientists excited by rigorous mechanism-driven research and bold questions in metastatic disease.