Epigenetic Heterogeneity as a Modulator of Therapeutic Response in T-ALL


NEXTGEN GRANT FOR TRANSFORMATIVE CANCER RESEARCH, IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR CANCER RESEARCH (2018-2021)

Birgit Knoechel, MD, PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Birgit Knoechel, MD, PhD

Dr. Knoechel is interrogating the remarkable number of epigenetic regulators mutated in pediatric leukemia to understand how changes in the epigenome contribute to cancer progression and resistance to therapy. Because individual leukemia cells in a single patient can vary significantly in their characteristics and behaviors, Dr. Knoechel’s lab studies how variations in the epigenome of sub-populations of cancer cells contribute to drug resistance. Better understanding of how and why therapies fail to work will lead to the development of strategies to overcome resistance and successfully treat children with leukemia. Dr. Knoechel graduated with an MD/PhD degree from Albrecht-Ludwigs-Universitaet, Freiburg, Germany, and completed her pediatric residency at University of California, San Francisco. She trained in pediatric hematology/oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital and conducted postdoctoral research at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute.

PUBLISHED RESEARCH

Waldschmidt JM, Vijaykumar T, Knoechel B, Lohr JG. Tracking myeloma tumor DNA in peripheral blood. Best Pract Res Clin Haematol. 2020.

Anand P, Guillaumet-Adkins A, Dimitrova V, Yun H, Drier Y, Sotudeh N, Rogers A, Ouseph MM, Nair M, Potdar S, Isenhart R, Kloeber JA, Vijaykumar T, Niu L, Vincent T, Guo G, Frede J, Harris MH, Place AE, Silverman LB, Teachey DT, Lane AA, DeAngelo DJ, Aster JC, Bernstein BE, Lohr JG, Knoechel B. Single-cell RNA-seq reveals developmental plasticity with coexisting oncogenic states and immune evasion programs in ETP-ALL. Blood. 2021.

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