Media Coverage (Cell Dynamics)

In this hour-long video interview, Sui Huang discusses his paradigm-changing ideas for how we understand cancer and how they can influence how the disease is treated.

Research from the Heath and Wei labs has uncovered the rapid cellular mechanisms that melanoma cells employ to develop resistance to the cancer drug vemurafenib. By closely examining the initial hours and days after drug exposure, the study reveals how cancer cells activate a backup communication system to bypass the drug’s effects, suggesting potential new combination treatment strategies to overcome this resistance.

Work out of the Heath and Wei labs identified a survival mechanism that allows melanoma cells to quickly evade BRAF inhibitor treatments, and a reversible adaptation that can occur within hours of the first treatment and does not rely on reactivating the BRAF-ERK pathway.

The Wei and Heath labs and collaborators from MIT have uncovered a stealth survival strategy that melanoma cells use to evade targeted therapy, offering a promising new approach to improving treatment outcomes.

Sui Huang challenges the prevailing view of cancer as purely genetic. Huang and colleagues argue that many cancers lack identifiable driver mutations, suggesting non-genetic factors and disrupted gene regulatory networks may play crucial roles in cancer development.

ISB’s Heath Lab discovered key insights into how T cells – the body’s frontline immune soldiers – respond to infections like COVID-19.

This story published by Inside Precision Medicine covers ISB research showing that the different disease-fighting functions of distinct T cells are determined by the genetically encoded T-cell receptor (TCR) sequence that are unique to those cells. The findings are promising for developing custom immune responses to specific antigens.

ISB researchers have identified a network within Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the pathogen that causes tuberculosis, that allows it to tolerate and resist drug therapies. When the network is disrupted, Mtb’s cells are unable to properly divide, compromising their cell wall – a key defense mechanism.