Every cancer leaves clues in its DNA.
The challenge is finding the clues that matter.
At the Greehey Children’s Cancer Research Institute, the Zheng Lab, led by Siyuan Zheng, PhD, uses cancer genomics, bioinformatics, and computational biology to search enormous amounts of molecular data for changes that help cancers begin, grow, and respond—or fail to respond—to treatment.
Think of a tumor’s genome as a book containing billions of letters. Cancer can alter that book in many ways: a single letter may change, sections can disappear or be duplicated, and entire pieces of DNA or RNA can become rearranged.
The Zheng Lab develops computational methods to find those abnormalities and determine which ones may actually be important to cancer.
That challenge is especially interesting in childhood cancer.
Pediatric cancers often contain fewer mutations and DNA copy-number changes than adult cancers. That means researchers may need to look beyond simply counting mutations to understand what is driving a child’s tumor. The Zheng Lab is developing tools that integrate gene expression with multiple kinds of molecular information specifically to help researchers investigate pediatric cancers.
And a recent discovery shows why that matters.
In August 2026, Dr. Zheng contributed to research on Ewing sarcoma, an aggressive bone and soft-tissue cancer that primarily affects children and young adults. Researchers discovered that EWSR1::FLI1, the abnormal fusion protein that drives Ewing sarcoma, can promote the formation of structures called neocentromeres in Ewing sarcoma cells. The work provides another clue about how this cancer can disrupt the machinery that organizes and distributes chromosomes when cells divide.
The Zheng Lab also studies telomeres and telomerase.
Telomeres are protective structures at the ends of chromosomes that normally become shorter as cells divide. Cancer cells can escape that natural limit by reactivating telomerase, an enzyme that maintains those chromosome ends and allows cells to keep dividing. Understanding how cancer switches this system back on could reveal new biological vulnerabilities.
This is where computational cancer research becomes powerful.
A computer analysis alone doesn’t cure cancer. But it can help researchers identify the genetic changes worth pursuing in the laboratory—and turn mountains of biological data into testable ideas about how a tumor works.
Sometimes the breakthrough isn’t finding more data. It’s finding the one clue hidden inside the data that changes what researchers investigate next.
By decoding the genomic changes behind childhood cancer, the Zheng Lab is helping researchers understand what makes these tumors different—and where new treatment approaches may begin.
Support childhood cancer research and help scientists turn genomic clues into discoveries that could lead to better, less harmful treatments for kids.
🔬 Learn more about the Zheng Lab
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