Lauren A. Van Der Kraak, PhD

  • Postdoctoral Scholar

Lauren received her BSc from the University of Guelph in Biochemistry. After taking 8 months to work as a Clinical Research Project Assistant at the Hospital for Sick Children, Lauren moved to McGill University for her PhD. There her research focused on genetic susceptibility to colitis and colitis-associated colorectal cancer in the laboratories of Dr. Philippe Gros and Dr. Nicole Beauchemin. Following her PhD Lauren completed a 2 year post doctoral fellowship in the laboratories of Dr. Micheal Lotze and Dr. Rajeev Dhupar at the Hillman Cancer Center where she studied the role of PD-L1 andPD-L2 in esophageal cancer. As a T-32 funded post doctoral scholar in the Canna Lab, Lauren is interested in intestinal manifestations of hyperactivatingmutations in the NLRC4 inflammasome and the regulation and significance of intestinal epithelial major histocompatibility complex class II in local gutand systemic diseases.

Education & Training

  • BSc, Biochemistry Co-operative Education, University of Guelph, 2007
  • PhD, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Biochemistry, McGill University, 2015

Selected Publications

Dhupar R, Van Der Kraak L, Pennathur A, Schuchert MJ, Nason KS, Luketich JD, Lotze MT (2017) Targeting immune checkpoints in esophageal cancer: A high mutational load tumor. Ann Thorac Surg. 103(4):1340-1349. 

Van Der Kraak L, Goel G, Ramanan K, Kaltenmeier C, Zhang L, Normolle DP, Freeman GJ, Tang D, Nason KS, Davison JM, Luketich JD, Dhupar R, Lotze MT (2016) 5-Fluorouracil upregulates cell surface B7-H1 (PD-L1) expression in gastrointestinal cancers. J Immunother Cancer. 4:65.  

Van Der Kraak L, Langlais D, Jothy S, Beauchemin N, Gros P (2016) Mapping hyper-susceptibility to colitis-associated colorectal cancer in FVB/NJ mice. Mamm Genome. 27(5-6):213-24.  

Van Der Kraak L, Beauchemin N, Gros P (2015) Colitis-associated colon cancer: is it in your genes? WJG. 21 (41): 11688-99.  

Foveau B, Van Der Kraak L, Beauchemin N, Albrecht S, LeBlanc AC (2014) Inflammation-induced tumorigenesis in mouse colon is caspase-6 independent. PLoS One. 9 (12): e114270. 

Meunier C, Van Der Kraak L, Turbide C, Groulx N, Labouba I, Cingolani P, Blanchette M, Yeretssian G, Mes- Masson AM, Saleh M, Beauchemin N, Gros P (2013) Positional mapping and candidate gene analysis of the mouse Ccs3 locus that regulates differential susceptibility to carcinogen-induced colorectal cancer. PLoS One. 8(3): e58733. 

Janssen S, Ramaswami G, Davis EE, Hurd T, Airik R, Kasanuki JM, Van Der Kraak L, Allen SJ, Beales PL, Katsanis N, Otto EA, Hildebrandt F (2011) Mutation analysis in Bardet-Biedl syndrome by DNA pooling and massively parallel resequencing in 105 individuals. Hum Genet. 129(1): 79-90. 

Van Der Kraak L, Meunier C, Turbide C, Jothy S, Gaboury L, Marcus V, Chang SY, Beauchemin N, Gros, P. (2010) A two-locus system controls susceptibility to colitis-associated colon cancer in mice. OncoTarget. 1(6): 436- 46. 

Meunier C, Cai J, Fortin A, Kwan T, Marquis JF, Turbide C, Van Der Kraak L, Jothy S, Beauchemin N, Gros P (2010) Characterization of a major colon cancer susceptibility locus (Ccs3) on mouse chromosome 3. Oncogene. 29(5):647-61. 

Sun W, Gerth C, Maeda A, Lodowski DT, Van Der Kraak L, Saperstein DA, Héon E, Palczewski K (2007) Novel RDH12 mutations associated with Leber congenital amaurosis and cone-rod dystrophy: biochemical and clinical evaluations. Vision Res. 47:2055-66.