Jessi Blackburn

Scientist and (new!) Associate Professor @universityofky using #zebrafish to find new treatments for childhood cancers.

[Jessi Blackburn @TheBlackburnLab]

Summer officially starts when our new undergrads arrive! Looking forward to working with these smiling faces for the next two months! 🤗 Maddie Wieringa from @ky_inbre, Sam Kirchhoff from @MCCTrainees and Maddie Gill from @GtownCollege. Lots of exciting projects starting up!

[Jessi Blackburn @TheBlackburnLab]

📣 My awesome grad student, Trace Jolly, will be presenting at the #ZDMS Cancer RIG on June 5! Hear all about his research using zebrafish to define how a #phosphatase causes cancer, and three other exciting talks! 🐟 🐟🐟 Register below! @MCCTrainees @ResearchKY

[Yi Feng @YiFeng_Fishlab]

📣 2024 ⁦@ZDMSociety⁩ Cancer RIG meet up Webinars! Four ECR rising stars ⁦⁦@SarahPerlee⁩ Tracy Jolly, ⁦@XiaodanQi⁩, Clay Foster, four cutting edge Zebrafish cancer models. Free for members, $25 for RIG Webinars of all topics in 2024👇 https://t.co/k38IsPeXjo

[Jessi Blackburn @TheBlackburnLab]

Had an amazing time at the @TheVFoundation V Summit! Lots of exciting research from new V Scholars, serving on the mentoring panel was fun, and workshops were so helpful! Best part: catching up with @CarolineN_Smith, Director at the V Foundation (but still my lab superstar 🤗)

[Jessi Blackburn @TheBlackburnLab]

Retreat follow-up...proof that I'm only slightly biased, @MajdHamaly won an award for best talk at the retreat! My other amazing grad student Viral Oza won an award for the best student seminar of the ENTIRE YEAR for his project on radiation resistance in #DIPG! 🤩@MCCTrainees

[Jessi Blackburn @TheBlackburnLab]

Biochem dept retreat today! My superstar grad student @MajdHamaly gave a great talk and poster showing off her #zebrafish drug screens to target leukemia initiating cells.

[Jessi Blackburn @TheBlackburnLab]

Had a great time at #ZDM16 this week! Especially because I got to relax while @MajdHamaly did all the hard work repping our lab with her poster and awesome talk 🤩

[Jessi Blackburn @TheBlackburnLab]

Very excited and proud to see our past lab member Anna Cox speak about her unique journey as cancer patient, then researcher, and now med student at Markey's ceremony for gaining NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center status! She even gave our #zebrafish a shout-out! 🤗

[University of Kentucky @universityofky]

"What started with time as a cancer patient led me to innovative cancer research, and then to medical school as a future physician — all at one institution. This is what being a Comprehensive Cancer Center is all about. Markey Cancer Center is committed to excellence, and now as an NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center, they have the title to prove it."
-Anna Cox, former @UKMarkey patient and third year @UKYMedicine student

[Jessi Blackburn @TheBlackburnLab]

🎉🎉🎉 Big congrats to my awesome grad student @MajdHamaly, who sailed through her PhD qualifying exam today! I really admire (and am grateful for!) the hard work she puts into making it all look so easy. Excited to see what the next 2 years will bring! 🤗 @MCCTrainees

[Jessi Blackburn @TheBlackburnLab]

🥳 Exciting news! My amazing undergrad Angelica Rivera-Martinez was awarded a Pediatric Oncology Training Program grant! Huge thanks to @AlexsLemonade for their generous support of both her and her research in our lab! @ResearchKY @MCCTrainees

[Jessi Blackburn @TheBlackburnLab]

👏Big thanks to @DeredgeLab and @korotkov_lab for their help with the protein work. And 1st author @CarolineN_Smith was amazing as always. She decided we needed to do this and just made it happen.🙌 Check it out here! 6/6🔗https://t.co/mz4Fi4d4l0 @MCCTrainees

[Jessi Blackburn @TheBlackburnLab]

📢 Exciting news in the Blackburn lab! Our nanobody paper is out now in @PLOSONE! Our research focuses on PRL-3, a protein known to be important in cancer. But we didn't have a good way to study it...until now! 🥳 1/6 https://t.co/mz4Fi4d4l0 @ResearchKY @UKMarkey

[Jessi Blackburn @TheBlackburnLab]

🔍Our paper in @PLOS details the step-by-step methods for making and testing the nanobodies and can be applied to any protein.🌟 5/6

[Jessi Blackburn @TheBlackburnLab]

R01 due in a week 😱 So of course I spent the morning making badge reels for our new undergrads and daydreaming about an etsy shop to fund the lab 😅 #Productivity

[Jessi Blackburn @TheBlackburnLab]

So glad that @CarolineN_Smith stopped by on her last weekend in KY for a Friday Fun with the lab! 🥰 I'll miss her around here so much, @TheVFoundation truly hit the jackpot by bringing her on board.

[Jessi Blackburn @TheBlackburnLab]

And, @MajdHamaly won the best poster award! 🥳 Which is especially impressive considering she's my Pharmacology PhD student and this was a Biochemistry dept retreat 😁

[Jessi Blackburn @TheBlackburnLab]

Dept retreat today, and our lab did not come to play! 😁 Viral Oza gave a great talk on #dipg relapse, @MajdHamaly talked about using #zebrafish screens to find new drugs for leukemia, and our undergrad Ty Cheatham gave his poster on prl3's #phosphatase activity. @MCCTrainees

[Jessi Blackburn @TheBlackburnLab]

🥳 Congrats to my grad student @MajdHamaly for crushing her first ever department seminar today! I always get SO nervous at student talks...I want it to go well for them! But this time my pulse was almost normal before the 1/2 way mark. She aced it! 🤩 @MCCTrainees