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Maud Maillard: How NUDT5 Regulates Thiopurine Metabolism in Children with Leukemia?

Maud Maillard/LinkedIn

Aug 5, 2025, 19:53

Maud Maillard: How NUDT5 Regulates Thiopurine Metabolism in Children with Leukemia?

Maud Maillard, Specialist Assistant Pharmacist at IUCT-Oncopole, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“Another member of the NUDIX family is in the spotlight. Check out our paper in the latest issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation to find out how NUDT5 regulates thiopurine metabolism in children with leukemia.

And the very thoroughful commentary from Kager and Boztug about the potential implications for pharmacogenomics-guided therapy optimization in ALL.”

Jun Yang, Professor and Endowed Chair in Pharmacogenomics at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, shared a post by Maud Maillard, adding:

“A project 5+ years in the making.
It began when my talented PhD student Rina Nishii ran a CRISPR screen across all NUDIX genes—hoping to uncover another thiopurine-metabolizing enzyme like NUDT15, which led us to NUDT5.

Maud Maillard picked it up when Rina moved to BMS and she then worked tirelessly with our fantastic collaborator Min Ni to delve into the mechanistic details. It turns out NUDT5 doesn’t metabolize thiopurines directly—instead, it regulates purine salvage, plausibly at more than one control points.

Lesson learned: science takes time, and even with a old drug like thiopurine, there’s still so much to discover.”

Title: The NUDIX hydrolase NUDT5 regulates thiopurine metabolism and cytotoxicity

Authors: Maud Maillard, Rina Nishii, Hieu S. Vu, Kashi R. Bhattarai, Wenjian Yang, Jing Li, Ute Hofmann, Daniel Savic, Smita Bhatia, Matthias Schwab, Min Ni, Jun J. Yang

Read the Full Article.

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cancer Daniel Savic Hieu S. Vu Jing Li Jun J. Yang Jun Yang Kashi R. Bhattarai Leukemia Matthias Schwab Maud Maillard Min Ni OncoDaily Oncology Rina Nishii Smita Bhatia The Journal of Clinical Ute Hofmann Wenjian Yang

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