Damon Runyon News

Dr. Chang is studying protamines—short, positively-charged proteins that condense DNA into chromatin and regulate gene expression in sperm nuclei. While eukaryotic cells use histones to package genomes in a way that allows access for transcription and replication, sperm cells must package their genomes more tightly. For this, many animals deploy protamines instead of histones.

Drugs that trigger the immune system to kill cancer cells show remarkable promise as cancer therapy. Many cancers, however, avoid detection by the immune system altogether. Dendritic cells (DCs), which play a critical role in initiating and maintaining immune responses, are often dysfunctional in cancer, preventing the immune system from “seeing” cancerous cells. Dr. Wattenberg hypothesizes that DC dysregulation is driven by systemic inflammation, a common reaction to cancer, and that novel DC-targeted treatments can reverse this dysfunction and sensitize tumors to immune attack.

Blood stem cells, which give rise to various blood cells in the body, acquire mutations with increasing frequency as we age. In the absence of blood cancer development, this state is called clonal hematopoiesis. Up to a quarter of individuals over 60 years old will have recurrent mutations detected in their blood. Recent studies suggest that those with clonal hematopoiesis have an increased risk of developing heart disease and blood cancer, as well as increased levels of inflammatory cytokines – signaling molecules released by immune cells to promote inflammation. Dr.

A feared complication of malignant solid tumors is the development of brain metastases (BM), for which current treatments are limited and morbidity is high. While precision medicine approaches for BM have recently demonstrated promise, many patients are not able to benefit from this treatment approach as molecular analysis of BM tissue is not usually feasible. To address this obstacle, Dr. Kim [William G.

The connection between cardiovascular disease and cancer, the two leading causes of death in the United States, extends beyond cancer treatment’s impact on the cardiovascular system. These complex diseases share several important risk factors and aspects of disease progression. In the development of atherosclerosis, a build-up of fatty material in the arterial walls, vascular smooth muscle cells can change their roles and influence the progression of disease. Dr.

Immune B cells defend the human body from infections by quickly dividing to increase their numbers and mutating their immune receptors to adapt to new pathogens. However, such frequent division and mutation creates a high risk of blood cancers, like lymphomas and myelomas. Every B cell makes an important decision about its fate – to die, to divide a certain number of times, or to differentiate into an antibody-producing cell – based on the affinity of its receptor to an oncoming pathogen.

Dr. Grunwald [Lallage Feazel Wall Fellow] focuses on the disconnect between genotype and phenotype. Despite our wealth of knowledge about the human genome, we are often unable to accurately predict which individuals will suffer from genetic diseases, including cancers. It has been proposed that cells have mechanisms capable of buffering genetic variation, such that the phenotypic outcome of these genetic variants is sometimes obscured.

Dr. Zheng [Connie and Bob Lurie Fellow] is developing small molecules that selectively inhibit the protein K-Ras(G12D). Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the most lethal common cancer due to the infrequency of early diagnosis and the lack of targeted or immune therapies. A high percentage (>90%) of PDAC patients harbor KRAS mutations, with the majority expressing the K-Ras(G12D) missense mutation.

Dr. Tai studies bacterial biofilms or aggregates of bacterial cells in an extracellular matrix. Biofilms play a critical role in many health and industry settings. Biofilm-forming bacteria and imbalance in patients’ gut microbiota have been found to correlate with cancer development, and cancer patients receiving therapy frequently suffer from bacterial infections. From the unique perspectives of microbiology, soft matter physics, and ecology, Dr.

Dr. Lalanne investigates the biophysical determinants of gene expression. Dysregulation of the expression of select oncogenes and tumor suppressors in specific tissues is sufficient to initiate tumorigenesis. Such dysregulation can arise from small-scale genetic changes that alter the binding sites of transcription factors in otherwise inactive enhancers (the short, non-coding regions of DNA to which transcription factors bind, activating gene expression).