Lab Members

I earned my MS from the University of Houston in biotechnology and molecular biology. Later, I joined MD Anderson Cancer Center’s adoptive T-cell department where I worked on TIL therapy in melanoma patients. I then worked at Baylor College of Medicine in the labs of Matthew Ellis, MD, and Meghasyam Kavuri, MD, where we characterized mutations involved in chemotherapy resistance in ER+ breast cancer patients. I’m currently a graduate student in the Merchant Lab and am interested in tumor microenvironment and sentinel lymph node biology in cancer.

Alicia Gamboa received her BS in biochemistry from California State University, San Bernardino, and her MS in biochemistry from California State University, Long Beach. She worked under Dr. Katarzyna Slowinska, where she studied the biophysical properties of collagen mimetic peptides and their use for delivery of nucleic acids and small molecule drugs. She then worked at City of Hope as part of a small team for clinical manufacturing of lentiviral vectors. She is now a doctoral student in the Cedars-Sinai Biomedical and Translational Sciences program. She is interested in the role of the immune microenvironment in cancer.

George received his BS in biochemistry with a minor in Italian studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. At UIC he volunteered at an endocrinology lab and studied the mechanisms of DHA and EPA in the prevention and treatment of neurological diseases. After finishing his degree, he began work as a pharmacy technician in California, then moved on to cancer research at City of Hope Hospital as a biospecimen coordinator. Currently in the Merchant Lab at Cedars-Sinai, his work mainly consists of helping manage the GvHD (graft-versus-host disease) trial and researching the effects of PTCy and Th17 on treatment and formation of GvHD.

Tucker Lemos received his bachelor’s degree in biology and English from Williams College. He has worked under David Smith at Isle Royale National Park, where he studied evolutionary plasticity through monitoring changes in the ecological niche of Pseudacris Triseriata. His current research focuses on Hedgehog signaling in hematopoiesis and on exploring related therapeutic targets.

Joseph received his MD/PhD from Virginia Commonwealth University where his research focused on the roles of several metalloproteases in cellular immune responses. There, he utilized conditional mouse knockout models to study the cell specific roles of these metalloproteases in multiple disease models. Joseph is a Clinical Pathology resident in the Physician Scientist Training Program. Following residency, he plans to continue pathology training with a clinical fellowship in Hematopathology. At Cedars-Sinai, he is interested in utilizing spatial proteomic and transcriptomic techniques to study immune responses in hematologic malignancies.

Mahov's path to bioinformatics began with an interest in numerical methods and control systems theory during his engineering studies at Georgia Tech. His academic pursuits then led him to the Technical University of Munich, Germany, where he specialized in computational science and applied mathematics within the context of biomedical and data science applications. Mahov's background in the latter includes projects of spatio-temporal predictive modeling, as well as inference on multiomic leukemia and lymphoma datasets. In his role at Cedars-Sinai, Mahov aims to support the understanding of, and therapeutic interventions against, cancer by harnessing and developing novel machine-learning approaches toward identifying and characterizing relevant molecular and cellular interactions.

Noah Merin, MD, PhD, is a hematologist treating patients with hematologic malignancies, and performs allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Together with the Merchant Lab, Merin has developed a novel haploidentical stem cell transplantation regimen that uses reduced-intensity chemotherapy, post-transplant cyclophosphamide graft-versus-host disease prophylaxis, pre-emptive donor-derived natural killer cell add-back, and omission of drugs that inhibit immune recovery. This approach is reducing rates of graft versus host disease and viral reactivation, and may lead to improved outcomes. Merin is collaborating with the Merchant Lab to study the reconstitution of the immune system following allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Improved stem cell transplant regimens, and greater insight into post-transplant immune reconstitution, will lead to better clinical outcomes for patients undergoing this life-saving procedure. Merin and Merchant are also collaborating on a clinical trial of a bispecific T cell engager, blinatumomab, combined with haploidentical donor lymphocyte infusions, for patients with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. One goal of this project is to study the spatial clustering of T cells in the bone marrow as a marker of treatment response.

Anton received his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines. Before receiving his degree he performed research work as an intern at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. After graduating, he immediately moved to L.A. to pursue other opportunities. His first position was as a pathology coordinator for Sherman Oaks Hospital before joining Cedars-Sinai in the Merchant Lab. He’s currently interested in cancer research and plans to focus his graduate studies toward the cancer arena in the future.

Alex Xu is a reformed materials scientist with an interest in single cell analysis and cancer heterogeneity. After studying virus templated materials and the EGFR signaling pathway at MIT, he developed a nanoscale drug delivery platform during his PhD at Stanford University. As a postdoc at Caltech and the Institute for Systems Biology, he applied single cell transcriptomics to projects in cancer and, more recently, COVID-19. At Cedars-Sinai, he is interested in spatial, high-dimensional, multi-omic analyses of disease.