Program Activities
- Regular monthly meetings, grand rounds & invited speakers
- Shared resource review and leadership
- Participation in organ site oncology programs
Significant Accomplishments over the Past Five Years
Basic Cancer Mechanisms
- Discovery that apoptosis is controlled via Drp-1-mediated mitochondrial fragmentation (Jagasia et al., Nature 433: 754, 2005).
- Discovery that MLL, the gene most frequently involved in infant leukemias, is required for adult stem cell maintenance (Jude et al., Cell Stem Cell 1: 324, 2007).
- Discovery of a conserved oncogenic function for the amino-terminus of the APC tumor suppressor gene, which is maintained in cancer-associated truncating mutations of APC (Takacs et al., Science 319: 333, 2008).
Molecular Disease Classification
- Discovery that two clinically distinct subtypes of glioblastoma multiforme can be distinguished based on transcriptional profiling (Liang et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci 433:754, 2005; Reif et al., Cancer Informatics 2:19, 2007).
- Identification of Nestin as a selective marker of the basal/epithelial subtype of breast tumors (Li et al., Cancer Res 67: 501, 2007).
Drug Target and Lead Compound Identification
- Biophysical characterization of domains of leukemogenic core-binding factor fusion proteins and mapping of domains to activities (Liu et al, Cancer Cell 9: 249, 2006; Liu et al, Cancer Cell 11: 483, 2007); identification and optimization of small molecules, which block binding of Runx1 to CBFbeta (Gorczynski et al., Chem Biol. 14: 1186, 2007).
- Identification of G1 cyclins as downstream targets of rexinoids and EGFR receptor blockade, and development of a murine lung cancer model by expressing a nondestructible G1 cyclin in the lung (Dragnev et al. Clin Cancer Res 10: 2570, 2004; Dragnev et al., Clin Cancer Res 10: 7547, 2004; Dragnev et al., Clin Cancer Res 13: 1794, 2007; Ma et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci, USA 104: 4089, 2007; Yuan et al., Oncogene 26: 1046, 2007).
- Discovery of nicotinamide riboside as a natural product with the potential to prevent chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (Bieganowski et al., Cell 117: 495, 2004; Belenky et al., Cell 129: 473, 2007; Tempel et al., PLoS Biology 5: e263, 2007).
