Whitney Henry

Whitney Henry is an Assistant Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), affiliated with the Department of Biology and the Koch Institute. Her research focuses on ferroptosis mechanisms, metastasis, and precision medicine. She earned her PhD from Harvard University and completed postdoctoral training at the Whitehead Institute under Robert Weinberg. Dr. Henry leads the Henry Lab, which employs interdisciplinary approaches combining functional genomics, metabolomics, and bioengineering to advance cancer therapies.

Education: PhD in Biological Sciences from Harvard University (advisor: Alex Toker), Bachelor's in Biology from Grambling State University with a Chemistry minor. Research interests include understanding ferroptosis regulation in cancer cells, tumor microenvironment dynamics, and drug resistance. Her work emphasizes translational research to bridge basic discoveries with clinical applications.

Key research themes include lipid metabolism's role in ferroptosis, the interplay between cellular iron dynamics and cancer progression, and innovative methods to manipulate ferroptosis resistance. Recent studies highlight lipidome reprogramming and enzyme scaffolds (e.g., MMD-ASCL4-MBOAT7) in modulating cellular susceptibility to ferroptosis.

Her lab develops novel in vitro and in vivo models to study metastasis and therapy-resistant cancer subpopulations. While no specific awards are listed, her work has been supported by fellowships from the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund and the Ludwig Center at MIT.

Lab and team: The Henry Lab at MIT integrates expertise in biochemistry, cell biology, and systems biology. Collaborators include leaders in cancer research such as Robert Weinberg and Schreiber SL. Current projects investigate polyamine metabolism's role in iron homeostasis and palmitoylation-based GPX4 targeting to enhance antitumor immunity.