Events

A principle in the development of cancer therapeutics is that robust yet selective death of the malignant cell is critical. I will present an approach that leverages chemically induced proximity to rewire oncogenes to activate programmed tumor death in a specific manner, using molecules termed transcriptional/epigenetic chemical inducers of proximity (TCIPs)1-3. These small molecules redirect epigenetic regulators to selectively activate cell death genes silenced by cancer drivers, such as BCL6 in diffuse large B cell lymphomas. Structural and mechanistic studies reveal a sub-stoichiometric, gain-of-function mechanism. Induced proximity thus enables systematic exploitation of the malignant function of an oncogenic driver to achieve context-specific gene control, offering a new direction for targeted cancer therapeutics.

Sai Gourisankar, PhD is an NCI K99/R00 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Cancer Institute in the laboratory of Prof. Nathanael Gray. His PhD was in chemical engineering, advised by Prof. Gerald Crabtree, where he investigated mechanisms of epigenetic regulation in cancer and development. Dr. Gourisankar’s postdoctoral work focuses on developing new small molecule technologies to target and reprogram oncogenic drivers for therapeutic applications, particularly using chemical induced proximity approaches and enabled by biochemistry and genomics. Dr. Gourisankar’s work has been covered by The New York Times, Endpoints, and Chemical & Engineering News, as well as editorials in Nature News and Views, Nature Chemical Biology, and Cancer Discovery.