Dan

Puram, Tirosh, Parikh, et al. from the Bernstein and Regev labs have completed a detailed single cell transcriptomic analysis of matched primary tumor and metastatic lymph nodes in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma patients, defining the landscape of tumor heterogeneity. The research team has identified a subpopulation of malignant cells which express a partial … Continued

In a Review in Science this week, Flavahan et al. lay out a case for how epigenetic plasticity can lead to all the key hallmarks of cancer. Summary – Reprint – Full Text

Drier et al. describe how enhancer hijacking rewires the regulation of the oncogenic transcription factor MYB and drives adenoid cystic carcinoma. Translocation of MYB near super-enhancers that are themselves bound by MYB creates a vicious cycle where MYB drives its own transcription. MYB also binds enhancers that drive different regulatory programs in alternate cell lineages in … Continued

Will Flavahan, Yotam Drier, et al. demonstrate that hypermethylation-induced loss of genomic insulator function causes the development of oncogenic genome topology configurations in IDH1-mutant glioma. This topological restructuring allows a constitutive housekeeping enhancer to interact with and drive the potent glioma oncogene PDGFRA. Key Findings: -The hypermethylator phenotype observed in IDH1-mutant glioma extends to CpGs … Continued