Staff

Nyla Heerema, Ph.D., ABMG, FACMG,
Director

Dr. Heerema is Director of the Clinical Cytogenetics Laboratory at The Ohio State University and a Professor in the Pathology Department. She is boarded in medical cytogenetics by the American Board of Medical Genetics and has over 25 years of experience in cancer cytogenetics, including both research and clinical applications of traditional banded metaphase analyses and many types of FISH. Dr. Heerema has performed many types of FISH, including multicolor FISH and development of the probes, as well as the use of different target tissue sources including fresh tissues, both individual cells and intact tissue, frozen specimens, paraffin embedded tissues (PET) and blood and bone marrow smears. She also has experience in chromosome microdissection and comparative genomic hybridization (CGH). 

Dr. Heerema is a member of the Ponte di Legno group, an International Group sponsored by each country's cooperative group to study rare subsets of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She serves on the advisory board of the Children's Cancer Research Institute of Austria. She has published over 135 reviewed journal articles, many of which have been published in premier scientific journals, such as New England Journal of Medicine, Blood, Nature Genetics, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, and the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Krzysztof Mrózek, M.D., Ph.D.,
Associate Director

Dr. Mrózek is an experienced cancer cytogeneticist, with more than 20 years of practice in the field. His areas of expertise include banded cytogenetic analysis of human leukemia, solid tumors and cell lines as well as mouse neoplastic tissues, FISH with painting, chromosome enumeration and locus specific probes, and 24-color spectral karyotyping (SKY) applied to study chromosome abnormalities in cancer cells.  Dr. Mrózek is a Research Scientist in the Division of Hematology and Oncology, and directs the Divisional Cytogenetics Research Laboratory.  Dr. Mrózek has authored over 65 original research articles published in such scientific journals as PNAS, Journal of Cell Biology, Journal of Clinical Oncology,  Blood, Cancer Research and Genes Chromosomes and Cancer, along with  numerous review articles, book chapters, oral and poster presentations and invited talks at national and international conferences.

Jadwiga Labanowska, MS,
Research Associate

Ms. Labanowska is a molecular and cytogenetics technologist with expert knowledge in classical cytogenetics and in FISH technology, as well as in other molecular and traditional cytogenetics methods. She has been applying FISH technology for more then 12 years in both clinical and research applications, and has used both commercial and "laboratory developed" probes on a variety of specimens. Ms. Labanowska has used cell culture techniques for many years, including cell synchronization, and has experience with PCR, nick translation, DNA isolation and labeling, as well as Southern blot analysis. She has also applied traditional cytogenetics methods, including cell harvesting, slide making, banding and karyotyping of both human and murine cells.