Center for Cancer Research

In an Oct 2019 paper published in Nature, Strickley, Messerschmidt et al. investigated the role HPVs play in the development of skin cancer. Using a novel skin colonization model, they show that adaptive immunity against papillomavirus infection is able to protect the host from developing cancer.

Mass General investigators have created a new method that could make immune therapy more effective again brain tumors and expand its use against other types of solid tumors. Their study is published in the July 2019 issue of Nature Biotechnology.

In this July 2019 paper published in Cell, a group of researchers from the Suva lab identified four different states of glioblastoma, and demonstrated a remarkable level of plasticity between these states.

In a June 2019 paper published in Cell, Yan, Langenau and coworkers show that they can engraft a wide array of human tumors in optically clear zebrafish. The advantages of this system for imaging mean that it is readily possible to visualize dynamic changes in single engrafted cells.

In this 2019 paper published in Science, Dr. Zou and Dr. Lawrence showed that some nominated cancer drivers (e.g. a hotspot in gene MB21D2) are passenger hotspots, and would likely not be worthwhile targets for further study. These insights will improve ability to detect the true drivers of cancer.

In a May 2019 paper published in Nature, Grünewald et al investigated the effects of cytosine base editors for RNA and DNA editing. They show that targeting of rat APOBEC1 can cause extensive transcriptome-wide deamination of RNA cytosines in human cells, inducing tens of thousands of C-to-U edits.

Advances is our electronic publication & podcast that highlights our investigators’ recent publications in high-profile journals.