Clinical Cancer Research: Preclinical Activity of the B7-H3-Targeting Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADC) Vobramitamab Duocarmazine (Vobra Duo) in Pediatric Cancer Solid Tumors (Chen, Houghton, Kurmasheva Lab)

April 22, 2026

  Edward Favours  Haiying Tang  Peyton Wong  Samuel Ghilu  Vanessa del Pozo  Elena Mironova  Yidong Chen  Tim Stearns  Steven Neuhauser  Eric J. Earley  Stephen W. Erickson Jee Young Kwon  Emily L. Jocoy  David Groff  Kateryna Krytska  Matthew Tsang  Beverly A. Teicher  Yael P. Mossé  E. Anders. Kolb  Monirath Hav  Deryk Loo  Peter J. Houghton  Carol J. [...]

Journal of Biological Chemistry: Structural Basis for the Mechanism and Stability of the EEPD1 5’ Endonuclease (Gupta Lab)

April 10, 2026

 Robert A. Hromas1,∗ guptay@uthscsa.edu ∙ Aruna S. Jaiswal1,∗ ∙ Anurag Misra2,∗ ∙ Yaxia Yuan3 ∙ Daohong Zhou3 ∙ John I. Beckman2 ∙ Shailee Arya2 ∙ Adhishree Chidambaram2 ∙ Alexander B. Taylor2 ∙ Wendell Griffith4 ∙ Arunima Jaiswal1 ∙ Elizabeth A. Williamson1 ∙ Yogesh K. Gupta2 guptay@uthscsa.edu  ABSTRACT The 5’ endonuclease EEPD1 initiates repair of replication forks stalled at oxidative DNA damage. EEPD1 has abasic endonuclease activity that can replace APE1 and initiate base excision repair when the cell is overwhelmed with oxidative DNA damage. In this study, we investigated the structural basis of this [...]

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology: Resolution of R-loops and transcription–replication conflicts by SETX–BRCA1–BARD1 complex (Sung Lab, Rao Lab)

April 1, 2026

 Abstract Senataxin (SETX), an RNA–DNA helicase, accumulates at transcription pause sites through the tumor suppressor BRCA1. Here, we provide mechanistic insight into how SETX–BRCA1 resolves transcription-associated R-loops to prevent deleterious outcomes. Specifically, we show that full-length SETX unwinds R-loops with broad specificity and that the complex of BRCA1 and its obligatory partner BARD1 binds R-loops [...]

BioRxiv: Diverse Mechanisms of SMARCB1 Inactivation and Genome Maintenance Defects in Ultra-Rare Malignant Rhabdoid Tumors (Kurmasheva Lab, Chen, Lai)

March 27, 2026

 Elizabeth Rasmussen, Elena Mironova, Zhao Lai, Kendra Maaß, Stefanie Volz, Dias Kurmashev, Stefan M. Pfister, Yidong Chen, Raushan T. Kurmasheva ABSTRACT Malignant rhabdoid tumors (MRTs) are extremely rare and highly aggressive pediatric cancers classically defined by biallelic loss of the SMARCB1 gene, with rare involvement of SMARCA4. However, the molecular mechanisms leading to this loss are not yet fully understood. MRTs occur predominantly in infants, with the highest incidence in children under one year of [...]

BioRxiv: Intrinsically disordered SERBP1 regulates translation through topology-driven G-quadruplex recognition (Libich Lab)

March 19, 2026

       Antoine Baudin, Hoang H. Dinh, Kira Breunig, Xuifen Lei, Xiaoping Xu, View Luiz O. Penalva, David S. Libich Abstract Serpine mRNA-binding protein 1 (SERBP1) is an intrinsically disordered RNA-binding protein that regulates translation and ribosome biogenesis through interactions with ribosomes and other molecular complexes. Despite its regulatory importance and implication in cancer [...]

iScience: Predicting and interpreting protein and phosphoprotein abundance from pan-cancer and single-cell transcriptomes (Chen Lab)

March 12, 2026

 Hui-Mei Tsai1,2,3,12 ∙ Tzu-Hung Hsiao2,4,5,12 ∙ Yu-Chiao Chiu6,7 ∙ Yufei Huang6,7 ∙ Eric Y. Chuang1,8,9,10 chuangey@ntu.edu.tw ∙ Yidong Chen3,11,13 cheny8@uthscsa.edu Highlights • DeepGxP provides a framework to translate transcriptomes into proteomic insight • DeepEnrich links RNA predictors to functional protein pathways and activities • DeepEnrich reveals cancer type-specific EGFR and HER2 phosphorylation patterns • Mutation effects are captured even without mutation data in model training Summary Proteins that impact phenotype and disease are [...]

Chemical Science: Unveiling BCL-xL-specific PROTAC efficiency and dissociation pathways using native mass spectrometry (Olsen, Zhou)

February 24, 2026

 Mohamed I. Gadallah,  Kailyn L. Nonhof,  Digant Nayak,   Peiyi Zhang,   Olivia Dioli,   Guangrong Zheng,    Shaun K. Olsen,  Daohong Zhou  and  Jennifer S. Brodbelt   Author affiliations Abstract Overexpression of anti-apoptotic proteins such as BCL-xL is a hallmark of various cancers and a major driver of resistance to conventional chemotherapies. While small-molecule BCL-xL inhibitors have shown promising outcomes, [...]

Haematologica: IGF2BP3 inhibition: another home run for RNA-binding protein targeting in hematological malignancies (Penalva)

February 10, 2026

 Luiz O.F. Penalva RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) are critical regulators of gene expression, aNecting RNA processing till translation. More than 1,500 proteins have been catalogued as RBPs in the human genome. 1 RBPs are very diverse in respect to structure, characteristic of RNA binding domain and function. In fact, RBPs are notoriously multi-functional with some of [...]

BioRxiv: High-throughput mapping of 6,888 RAD51D variants identifies distinct biochemical functions needed for homologous recombination and olaparib response (Sung)

January 30, 2026

 Kristie E. Darrah, Shelby L. Hemker, Yashpal Rawal, Noah J. Goff, Phoebe Parker, Gayatri Ganesan, Caleb M. Stratton, Katherine Oppenheimer, Ella Roberts, Elena Glick, Nicole Banks, Arjun Kumar, Silvia Casadei, Matthew W. Snyder, Katherine Nathanson, Susan M. Domchek, Lea M. Starita, Shaun K. Olsen, Patrick Sung, Jacob O. Kitzman, Kara A. Bernstein Summary The tumor suppressor RAD51D is essential for homologous recombination (HR). Pathogenic variants in RAD51D are associated with breast and ovarian cancers. However, most clinical missense variants are of unknown significance. We performed a multiplex assay of variant effect to test 6,888 RAD51D coding variants for loss-of-function. The resulting variant-to-function [...]