News and insights

Subscribe to our newsletter

Overcoming mechanisms of drug resistance is an ongoing obstacle in developing successful cancer therapeutics. , researchers from the ӳý's Center for the Development of Therapeutics and colleagues describe using multiple myeloma-stroma cell co-cultures to screen for small molecules that overcome stroma-induced drug resistance; notably, they identified a compound that uniquely interacts with a microtubule-bound mitotic protein highly expressed in multiple myeloma cells compared with normal blood cells. These finding illustrate how chemical biology can complement genetics to advance therapeutics discovery.

From person to person, the human genome varies in a number of important ways. Some of the variation is in the form of genetic misspellings – single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs. Other variation takes the form of so-called “structural variation:” as genetic rearrangements, or as missing or extra segments of DNA, known as copy number variation (CNV). Scientists at the ӳý and elsewhere are working to locate and characterize many different types of variation and look for connections between the variants and human traits and disease.

The Crohn's Microbiome

In one of the largest longitudinal studies of the microbiome to date, researchers from the ,  (MGH), and the  Study Group have identified a connection between changes in gut microbiota and the onset of type 1 diabetes (T1D). The study, which followed infants who were genetically predisposed to the condition, found that onset for those who developed the disease was preceded by a drop in microbial diversity – including a disproportional decrease in the number of species known to promote health in the gut. These findings, , could help pave the way for microbial-based diagnostic and therapeutic options for those with T1D.

In a New England Journal of Medicine , ӳý associate member Robert Green and co-authors examine the legacy of the 2008 Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA). They note that, while few cases of genetic discrimination have ever been documented, pervasive fears persist about how personal genomic data may be used. This fear, they argue, may be hindering participation in genomic research. A story on their perspective piece can also be found on the .

Head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) affect over 600,000 people annually around the world, many attributable to smoking or human papillomavirus infection. In order to understand the somatic gene mutations and copy number alterations present in these cancers, ӳý researchers Andrew Cherniack, Peter Hammerman, Juok Cho, and colleagues as part of , profiled 279 HNSCCs. The studies, , identified a number of shared and unique sequence alterations that could be further investigated with the goal of preventing and treating these cancers.