Damon Runyon Researchers

Ewing sarcoma is an aggressive bone tumor that occurs in children and young adults. Cure rates, particularly when disease has spread, are low with currently available treatments. Dr. Guenther aims to identify critical genes on which Ewing sarcoma cells are dependent for survival, with the goal of discovering weaknesses in these cancer cells that may be exploited to stop cancer growth. CITED2 is of particular interest as a Ewing sarcoma-specific dependency gene based on a genome-wide screen in hundreds of cancer cell lines. In some other cancers, CITED2 is described as important for helping cells repair damage and survive stress, such as when they are exposed to chemotherapy. She has found that CITED2 is present in higher levels in Ewing sarcoma cells than in other types of cancer, and when CITED2's function is turned off in Ewing sarcoma cells, they grow more slowly. She aims to first confirm that CITED2 is critical for Ewing sarcoma survival. She will also investigate what makes CITED2 important in cancer cells, including specific features of Ewing sarcoma cells that contribute to its high levels of activity.  Additionally, she wants to understand CITED2's function in Ewing sarcoma cells, including any role for CITED2 in the repair of damage to DNA after chemotherapy or stress. The goal of this work is to develop new directed cancer therapies for patients with this devastating disease. She hopes that these studies will have an additional impact on the treatment of other cancers where CITED2 has been shown to play a role, including acute myeloid leukemia.