Damon Runyon News

Dr. Singh is using cryo-electron tomography for structural investigations of the phase-separated transcriptional sites inside the cells. Faulty regulation of transcription from DNA to RNA is one of the major hallmarks of cancer. Dr. Singh aims to gain knowledge about the transcriptional sites to explain how different components come together to carry out transcription, their relationships with the rest of the cell, and what can go wrong in the process to cause disease.

Dr. Sivanand aims to study how metabolic alterations impact pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma metastases. Pancreatic tumors primarily metastasize to the liver and the lung. It is known that genetics, tissue of origin, and tumor microenvironments can impose metabolic demands on cancer cells. However, it is unclear whether primary tumors and associated metastases during disease progression are metabolically different.

Dr. Nguyen aims to identify the molecular differences between cancer cells and healthy cells, using large-scale genetic approaches in acute myeloid leukemias. Cancer cells exhibit a high degree of diversity in the cellular pathways utilized for survival. Identifying these cellular differences could provide a method to strategically target and kill cancerous cells while minimizing the off-target effects to healthy cells.

Dr. Boydston is studying how cells interact with one another through cell-surface adhesion molecules. During cancer progression, cancer cells can change expression of some of these molecules to metastasize and evade the immune system. Dr. Boydston is using the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which can recognize and invade nearly all mammalian cells, to uncover novel proteins involved in this recognition.

Dr. Donaldson [Robert Black Fellow] is investigating the difference between a healthy mucosal surface and a tumor-promoting surface in the gut. Bacteria in the gut associate intimately with the surface of the intestine, where they exert a constant influence on the immune system throughout an organism’s life. Studies indicate that certain gut bacteria in cancer patients reside in the mucus of the intestinal surface and may promote (or potentially inhibit) the growth of tumors, perhaps through effects on the immune system.

Dr. Peck is developing a new method to determine the three-dimensional structures of proteins. Though X-ray crystallography has determined protein structure for decades, many proteins involved in cancer form crystals that are a million-fold too small to be studied by this method. Applying the microscopy technique of electron cryotomography to these nanocrystals holds the potential to overcome this limitation and resolve the atomic architectures of these difficult-to-characterize proteins.

Dr. Overacre-Delgoffe is utilizing unique tools to address how the interaction between the host’s immune system and gut microbes affects colon tumor progression and patient responsiveness to current immunotherapies. Currently, colon cancer patients show an extremely limited response to immune-based therapies and have very poor survival rates. The colon is a unique environment that is composed of host cells and numerous bacteria and microbes that have evolved with the host. Dr.

Dr. Van Vranken [The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research Fellow] is utilizing the fact that in the presence of increasing heat, proteins unfold and aggregate: a process known as thermal melting. All proteins have a characteristic melting temperature and this property can be influenced by numerous factors including ligand-binding events, protein-protein and protein-nucleic acid interactions, and post-translational modifications. Thermal shift assays can be employed to quantify perturbations in this physical property.

Dr. Chang is investigating the role of activity-regulated gene expression in human brain evolution. Activity-regulated pathways control critical brain functions and modulate tumor growth in multiple cancers. These pathways are broadly conserved across all mammals, but newer studies have identified features that are unique to primates and may influence important aspects of brain function and tumor progression. Dr. Chang will study the function, regulation, and evolution of primate-specific genes.

Dr. Wu is studying the epigenetic profile of glioma brain tumors at single cell resolution. Epigenetic alterations, which change gene expression without any changes to the underlying DNA sequence, can affect cancer driver genes in many tumor types, including gliomas. Unlike genetic mutations, epigenetic alterations are often reversible and are promising drug targets. Dr.