Guo Wei, PhD (Damon Runyon Fellow ‘05-‘08), Todd R. Golub, MD (Innovation Award Committee Member, Board Member) and colleagues at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and The Broad Institute, Cambridge, used chemical genomics to identify compounds that decrease activity of MCL1, a protein that helps keep cells alive (anti-apoptotic) and is frequently overexpressed in cancer. In addition, the researchers found that high expression of another gene, BCL-xL, confers resistance to MCL1 repression. These compounds could be developed as cancer therapeutics to treat MCL1-dependent tumors, using BCL-xL as a biomarker to predict whether a tumor will respond to therapy. This study was published in the journal Cancer Cell.
