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Mayumi Fujita, M.D./Ph.D., Professor, Department of Dermatology
Using patient-derived xenografts from melanoma, colon, and pancreatic cancer tissues, Dr. Fujita and her colleagues discovered that CDK1, a master regulator of the cell cycle, was upregulated in tumor-initiating cells (Cancer Res., 2018). They also discovered that CDK1 was a novel regulator of the pluripotent stem cell transcription factor Sox2. These findings suggest that the interaction between CDK1 and Sox2 may be a new therapeutic target for several types of cancer.
Kathleen Gavin, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Division of Geriatric Medicine, Susan Majka, Ph.D., Professor, Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine, National Jewish Health, and Dwight Klemm, Ph.D., Professor, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
Drs. Gavin, Majka and Klemm report that loss of ovarian hormones influences the production and distribution of adipocytes in adipose tissue arising from bone marrow-derived cells in mice (Front Endocrinol., 2018). If translatable across species, the production of bone marrow derived adipocytes may be a mechanism by which abdominal body fat increases in estrogen- deficient postmenopausal women.
Igor Kogut, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Dermatology, Dennis Roop, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Dermatology, Ganna Bilousova, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Dermatology
Drs. Kogut, Roop and Bilousova report the development of a clinically safe approach that consistently reprograms healthy and disease-associated patient’s skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) with an unprecedented efficiency (Nature Communications, 2018). This breakthrough in developing a highly-efficient reprogramming method, that avoids the use of viral vectors, may allow FDA approval for one of the first iPSC-based clinical trials in the US.
David Norris, M.D., Professor, Department of Dermatology and Yiqun Shellman, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Dermatology
In this study, Drs. Norris and Shellman report that the use of a combination of BH3 mimetics against members of the BCL-2 family of cell survival factors are effective in inducing cell death of melanoma-initiating cells (Cell Death Dis., 2018). Of clinical relevance, they showed that melanoma samples taken from patients that had relapsed from current treatments, such as anti- PD-1 immunotherapy, were also killed by this combination therapy.
Eric Pietras, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Division of Hematology, and James Hagman, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Immunology, National Jewish Health
In this paper, Drs. Pietras and Hagman report a novel role for ZFP521 in regulating the numbers of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells, common lymphoid progenitors, and B and T cell precursors (Mol Cell Biol., 2018). These findings suggest that ZFP521 may be a novel target for cancer therapies.
Christopher Phiel, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Integrative Biology, CU Denver
Dr. Phiel identifies glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3) as a novel regulator of the RNA demethylase, FTO (fat mass and obesity-associated protein) at the protein level (J Biol Chem., 2018). This study provides the first evidence for how RNA methylation is regulated in mammalian cells and identifies a putative novel mechanism by which GSK-3 activity regulates stem cell pluripotency.
Holger Russ, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes/Microbiology and Immunology Department
Dr. Russ is a co-author of this paper, which describes for the first time the development of cell culture conditions that closely mimic events occurring during pancreatic islet organogenesis and β cell maturation (Nat Cell Biol. 2018). β cells grown under these conditions exhibit robust glucose-stimulated insulin secretion.
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