Ryan Schoenfeld, Chief Executive Officer at The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“It’s incredibly rewarding this week to see projects The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research has championed from the early stages break out into the mainstream.
Three newly published papers from our grantees have been generating a lot of (very well-deserved!) excitement:
1. Moving from early detection to true interception:
Last Friday, Charles Swanton and his team’s lung cancer prediction breakthrough made it onto the front page of The New York Times – a true milestone moment! Published in Cell by Cell Press along with colleagues including Tej Pandya, Maria Zagorulya, Michelle Leung, William Hill, and Clare Weeden, their research identified a 14-protein blood signature that can predict a person’s lung cancer risk more than five years before a diagnosis, whether or not they are a smoker. Instead of catching a tumor that already exists, the signature identifies the underlying inflammatory environment that allows cancer to take hold in the first place. Crucially, the data suggests that an existing anti-inflammatory drug could cut that risk nearly in half for high-risk patients-similar to the cardiovascular disease risk reduction from taking statins.
Title: Plasma signals of lung tumor promotion for molecular cancer prevention
Authors: Tej Pandya, Maria Zagorulya, Michelle Leung, Marcellus Augustine, Lydia Liu, Aino-Maija Leppä, Ulysse Baruchel, Sin Wi Ng, Tamara Klockner, Miriam Mugabo, Anthony Griffen, Oleg Blyuss, Chrysante Iliakis, Amalie Grenov, Kerstin Haase, David Muller, Ka Hung Chan, Jincheng Wu, Vernon Burk, Neil Wright, Alix Le Marois, Ekaterina Pazukhina, Sophia Ward, Hubert Slawinski, Marc Pelletier, Cian Murphy, Matthew Park, Thomas Snoeks, Alejandro Suarez-Bonnet, Simon Priestnall, Alexandros Hardas, Charlotte Grieco, Ami Archer, Alpkaan Celik, Alejandro Jimenez-Sanchez, Rachel Scott, Hana Zahed, Léa Montégut, Rafael Meza, Clinton Durney, Stephen Lam, Takahiro Karasaki, Roel Vermeulen, Huilei Xu, Pablo Serrano-Fernandez, Tatjana Crnogorac-Jurcevic, Usha Menon, Sophia Apostolidou, Alexey Zaikin, Richard Gunu, Harry Whitwell, Zhe Huang, Zonglun Li, Xin Hu, Bo Zhu, Liming Li, María Dolores Chirlaque, Marcela Guevara, Martijn Kolijn, Aghiles Guenoun, Neeloffer Mookherjee, Mattias Johansson, Ziqiao Wang, Nilanjan Chatterjee, Chao-Hua Chiu, Zhengming Chen, Dana Pe’er, Erik Sahai, Saskia Freytag, Andreas Wack, Marc Gunter, Miriam Merad, Jianjun Zhang, Christopher Carlsten, Pan-Chyr Yang, Hsuan-Yu Chen, Elizabeth Platz, Lindsay LaFave, Karl Smith-Byrne, Mariam Jamal-Hanjani, Kevin Litchfield, Nuno Nene, Nicholas McGranahan, Eva Grönroos, William Hill, Clare Weeden, Charles Swanton
Read the Full Article.
2. A new standard for single-cell multiomics:
Also in Cell by Cell Press, Emerging Leader Award winner Dan-Avi Landau debuted a new method to map at the single-cell level how transcription factor proteins turn genes on and off. The method, called ‘DandD-seq,’ fuses a targeted nanobody with a deamination enzyme, leaving a permanent chemical footprint exactly where proteins interact with DNA. Because the method captures even highly fleeting, transient interactions and integrates smoothly into existing single-cell workflows, researchers can now map DNA-protein interactions genome-wide.
Title: Single-cell mapping of regulatory DNA-protein interactions
Authors: Wei-Yu Chi, Sang-Ho Yoon, Evrim Goksel, Levan Mekerishvili, Joe Pelt, Yiyun Lin, Tamara Prieto, John Zinno, Saravanan Ganesan, Catherine Potenski, Franco Izzo, Dan Landau, Ivan Raimondi
Read the Full Article.
3. Mapping the human purine interactome:
In Nature Communications (Nature Portfolio), Emerging Leader Award winner Ku-Lung Hsu built a comprehensive map identifying over 31,000 targetable tyrosine and lysine sites sites across human proteins that could be targeted by future cancer therapeutics.
The team has already used this platform to uncover a proteome-wide selective ligand for ACAT2 that reveals an unexpected metabolic dependency in cancer cells.
Title: A chemoproteomic atlas of the human purine interactome for regioselective ligand discovery
Authors: Zhihong Li, Hsiao-Kuei Tsai, Adam Libby, Michael Founds, Olivia Murtagh, Madeleine Ware, David Leace, Wesley Wolfe, Phillip Gingrich, Bissan Al-Lazikani, Chin-Yuan Chang, Ku-Lung Hsu
Read the Full Article.
When we talk about the strategic value of early-stage, flexible funding, this is exactly what we mean. When you give brilliant investigators the runway to chase audacious ideas, they deliver! Each of these findings gives us new insights into cancer biology and an exciting path to future impact.
Congratulations to Charlie, Dan, Ken, and their respective teams on these remarkable achievements!”
Other articles about Ryan Schoenfeld on OncoDaily.