Brenen Papenberg, Ph.D.

Brenen Papenberg, Ph.D., joined the Laboratory of Translational Genomics (LTG) as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Ludmila Prokunina-Olsson, Ph.D., LTG Director and senior investigator, in 2020. Dr. Papenberg earned his Ph.D. in cancer cell biology from West Virginia University, Morgantown, in 2020. For his doctoral research, he used bioinformatic approaches, cellular models, and molecular biology tools to 1) describe a novel head and neck squamous cell carcinoma survival disparity in Appalachia; 2) identify large-scale chromosomal alterations that correlate with smoking in head and neck cancer patients; and 3) investigate novel functions of commonly amplified transcripts in head and neck cancer and their potential role as competing endogenous RNA.

Dr. Papenberg is currently using computational and laboratory methods to investigate several genomic regions that are associated with increased risk of bladder cancer, under the mentorship of Dr. Prokunina-Olsson.