John Prensner

John Prensner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics - Hematology Oncology at the University of Michigan. He is a physician-scientist and pediatric hematologist/oncologist specializing in childhood brain tumors, particularly medulloblastoma and diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma.

• Education: Tufts University (BS 2005), University of Michigan (MD/PhD 2014)
• Clinical training: Boston Combined Residency, Boston Children's Hospital/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute fellowship
• Postdoctoral research: Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

His research focuses on:

• Molecular mechanisms of childhood brain cancers
• Synthetic lethality in cancer genomics
• Metabolic dependencies in Group-3 medulloblastoma
• Non-canonical RNA translation and microproteins in oncogenesis
• CRISPR screening for therapeutic targets

Recent work highlights PELO as a synthetic lethal target in 5% of adult cancers and metabolic vulnerabilities in medulloblastoma, including cuproptosis mechanisms.

Collaborations include:

• @LyssiotisLab (metabolism)
• @vennetilab
• @CancerDepMap
• Carl Koschmann
• Paul Northcott
• Deepak Nagrath