Damon Runyon Researchers

Dr. Chu focuses on a promising new class of therapy that inhibits epigenetic regulators, proteins that control the expression and activity of genes through DNA sequence-independent chemical modifications. Much remains unknown about how these new drugs induce specific changes in tumors upon treatment or what their efficacy is in sustaining long-term, durable responses in patients. He plans to characterize the changes induced with the use of such inhibitors in animal and human models of leukemia. These studies may serve as a proof of principle for the broader use of epigenetic inhibitors as a part of cancer therapy.