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Susanna Greer: How Our Researcher is Finding New Ways to Approach This Childhood Cancer

Susanna Fletcher Greer/LinkedIn

Jun 5, 2025, 02:12

Susanna Greer: How Our Researcher is Finding New Ways to Approach This Childhood Cancer

Susanna Greer, Chief Scientific Officer of The V Foundation, posted on LinkedIn:

“I have been reading some incredible the V Foundation funded research this week. The study I’ve decided to share with you highlights that some of the most devastating cancers don’t announce themselves with flashing lights. They hide, cloaked in silence, growing in places we can’t easily reach, like in a child’s brainstem or spine. This is the case for Diffuse Midline Glioma (DMG), an incurable childhood brain tumor.

But researchers, including the V Foundation–funded team led by Dr. Richard Phillips at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, are uncovering the molecular secrets behind this disease. And one of those secrets might just crack the door open to new treatment options.

Almost all Diffuse Midline Glioma tumors carry the same key gene mutation H3K27M, or, in some cases, produce a protein called EZHIP. Both sabotage a cellular “off switch” that normally silences cancer-promoting genes. You’d think that if the off switch is broken, those genes would be turned on. But DMG doesn’t work that way.

Instead, the tumor hijacks what’s left of that silencing system, focusing its efforts on a few critical “locked doors” in our genome, the spots where it can stay hidden and terribly dangerous.

That’s where this new research piece of the puzzle comes in: Dr. Phillips and team found a very rare form of a protein complex which acts like a molecular locksmith. It keeps these specific doors shut, silencing genes that might otherwise stop the tumor or push it to mature into harmless cells.

Here’s the wild part: this complex makes up less than 5% of its protein family. But without it, the tumor can’t grow.

Why does this matter? This discovery teaches us that even rare players can have outsized impact. It’s a reminder that cancer isn’t just about genes being turned on, it’s also about the genes that stay forcibly turned off.

More importantly, it offers a new target. Instead of targeting the whole machinery (which could cause harmful side effects), researchers could aim directly at this tiny but mighty complex, offering a more precise therapy for an otherwise untreatable disease.

Why V Foundation research matters here: This is exactly the type of high-risk, high-reward science the V Foundation is proud to fund. We back research with bold questions and new ideas, ideas that traditional funders might overlook because they’re too novel or too complex. But it’s often in those places that breakthroughs begin.

In the case of this study, that meant combining CRISPR screens, proteomics, and chromatin mapping to discover how a rare protein complex contributes to DMG’s stealth and power.

And while we’re still early in the journey, studies like this offer real hope, not just for better understanding this deadly disease, but for designing smarter, safer therapies for kids who have run out of options.

Funding science = funding solutions. One brave idea at a time.”

More posts featuring Susanna Fletcher Greer.