Neuro-Oncology: Dual inhibition of MAPK and TORC1 signaling retards development of radiation resistance in pediatric BRAFV600E glioma models (Chen Lab, Zheng, Houghton)

July 1, 2025

 Fuyang Li ,  Kathryn M Bondra ,  Hanzhou Wang ,  Dias Kurmashev ,  Bipasha Mukherjee ,  Suman Kanji ,  Amyn A Habib ,  Yidong Chen ,  Siyuan Zheng ,  Sandeep Burma ,  Peter J Houghton Abstract Background MAPK pathway inhibitors (MAPKi) have shown significant efficacy in treating childhood BRAF-activated brain tumors. For tumors harboring BRAFV600E mutations, the drugs are rarely curative, and patients can become refractory [...]

BioRxiv: Robust statistical assessment of Oncogenotype to Organotropism translation in xenografted zebrafish (Kurmasheva, et al)

June 24, 2025

 Abstract Organotropism results from the functional versatility of metastatic cancer cells to survive and proliferate in diverse microenvironments. This adaptivity can originate in clonal variation of the spreading tumor and is often empowered by epigenetic and molecular reprogramming of cell regulatory circuits. Related to organotropic colonization of metastatic sites are environmentally-sensitive, differential responses of cancer [...]

Advanced Science: Biosecurity Primitive: Polymerase X-based Genetic Physical Unclonable Functions (Pertsemlidis)

June 18, 2025

 Zikun Zhou, Taek Kang, Jie Chen, Yesh Doctor, Jocelyn G Camposagrado, Yiorgos Makris, Alexander Pertsemlidis, Leonidas Bleris Abstract A Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) is a security primitive that exploits inherent variations in manufacturing protocols to generate unique, random-like identifiers. These identifiers are used for authentication and encryption purposes in hardware security applications in the semiconductor industry. Inspired by the success of silicon [...]

BioMolecular NMR Assignments: The 1H, 15N and 13C backbone resonance assignments of the N-terminal (1-149) domain of Serpine mRNA Binding Protein 1 (SERBP1) (Libich Lab)

May 30, 2025

 Antoine Baudin, Hoang H. Dinh, Xiaoping Xu & David S. Libich Abstract Serpine mRNA-Binding Protein 1 (SERBP1) is an RNA-binding protein implicated in diverse cellular functions, including translational regulation, tumor progression, and stress response. It interacts with ribosomal subunits, RNA, and proteins involved in stress granules, contributing to processes such as phase separation and epigenetic regulation. [...]

PNAS: Phase separation of the oncogenic fusion protein EWS::FLI1 is modulated by its DNA-binding domain (Libich & Bishop Labs)

May 16, 2025

 Emily E. Selig  Erich J. Sohn  Aiola Stoja, Alma K. Moreno-Romero, Shivani Akula, Xiaoping Xu, Alexander J. R. Bishop, and David S. Libich Significance The oncogenic fusion protein, EWS::FLI1, responsible for more than 85% of Ewing sarcoma tumors, combines the transactivation domain from EWS and the DNA-binding domain (DBD) from Friend leukemia integration 1 (FLI1). The fusion impacts the function of wild-type EWS and drives oncogenesis via [...]

Cell Reports: Distinct roles of the two BRCA2 DNA-binding domains in DNA damage repair and replication fork preservation (Sung, Libich Labs)

May 7, 2025

 Francisco E. Neal1,2 ∙ Wenjing Li1 ∙ Mollie E. Uhrig3,4 ∙ Jeffrey N. Katz1,2 ∙ Shahrez Syed1,2 ∙ Neelam Sharma3 ∙ Arijit Dutta1,2,8 ∙ Sandeep Burma1,5 ∙ Robert Hromas6 ∙ Alexander V. Mazin1 ∙ Eloise Dray1 ∙ David S. Libich1,2 ∙ Shaun K. Olsen1,2 ∙ Elizabeth V. Wasmuth1,2 ∙ Weixing Zhao1,2 ∙ Claus S. Sørensen7 Highlights BRCA2 OB-fold DNA-binding domain has specificity for ssDNA BRCA2 C-terminal DNA-binding domain has specificity for dsDNA OB-fold DNA-binding domain is needed for DNA repair and replication fork protection C-terminal DNA-binding domain functions primarily in replication fork protection Summary Homologous recombination (HR) removes DNA double-strand breaks [...]

Trends in Molecular Medicine: The RB protein: more than a sentry of cell cycle entry (Sung Lab)

May 1, 2025

 Pulari U. Thangavelu1,11 ∙ Cheng-Yu Lin1,11 ∙ Farzaneh Forouz2 ∙ Kozo Tanaka3 ∙ Eloïse Dray4,5,6 ∙ Pascal H.G. Duijf7,8,9,10 pascal.duijf@unisa.edu.au Highlights The retinoblastoma protein (RB) signal transduction pathway suppresses tumor development and is impaired in most cancers. RB pathway disruption in tumors promotes a broad range of malignant properties, such as cancer-associated blood vessel formation, metastasis, inflammation, immune evasion, cell survival, and metabolic reprogramming, as well as genomic instability. Impaired RB pathway [...]

Nature Communications: Epigenetic silencing of DNA sensing pathway by FOXM1 blocks stress ligand-dependent antitumor immunity and immune memory (Rao, Chen, Zheng, Sung Labs et al)

April 29, 2025

 Santosh Timilsina, Jian Yu Huang, Nourhan Abdelfattah, Daisy Medina, Deepika Singh, Shahad Abdulsahib, Panneerdoss Subbarayalu, Trong Phat Do, Prabhakar Pitta Venkata, Saif Nirzhor, Jack Prochnau, Mukund Bhandari, Siyuan Zheng, Yidong Chen, Gang Huang, Neelam Mukherjee, Robert Hromas, Patrick Sung, Virginia Kaklamani, Ratna Vadlamudi, Nu Zhang & Manjeet K. Rao Abstract The interplay between tumor cells and [...]

NPJ – Precision Oncology: Benchmarking mouse contamination removing protocols in patient-derived xenografts genomic profiling (Zheng, Wang, Kurmasheva, Houghton, Lai, & Chen Labs)

April 17, 2025

 Mukund Bhandari, Funan He, Anna Rogojina, Fuyang Li, Yi Zou, Jing Jiang, Zhao Lai, Peter Houghton, Raushan T. Kurmasheva, Yidong Chen, Xiaojing Wang & Siyuan Zheng Abstract Patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models are widely used in cancer research. Genomic and transcriptomic profiling of PDXs are inevitably contaminated by sequencing reads originated from mouse cells. Here, we examine [...]