Cancer

Earlier this year, 3 separate studies (Adamson, et al., Datlinger, et al., and Dixit, et al.) demonstrated an approach to combine pooled CRISPR genetic screening with RNA expression profiling at the single-cell level. Integrating these two approaches enables knockout-specific expression data to be generated for...

Essentially half of human DNA consists of repeated transposable elements or "mobile" DNA. One type of long interspersed element—LINE-1—is one of the most prevalent variants and accounts for approximately 17% of the human genome. The LINE-1 sequence is a protein-coding transposable element that copies itself through...

Using a Cellecta-made shRNA library, groups from the European Institute of Oncology and MD Anderson Cancer Center published the first in vivo pooled RNAi screen in patient-derived tumor xenograft PDX mouse models. The study published in June Cancer Discovery screened 236 epigenetic genes targeted with a pooled shRNA...

Researchers at Novartis recently published a study using a lentiviral based library containing many millions of unique sequences (barcodes) to label and track erlotinib-resistant non-small lung cancer cells. The approach provided a way to differentiate whether these resistant cells were already present in...

Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) is characterized by increased and unregulated growth of myeloid cells in the bone marrow and accumulation of these cells in the blood. Most CML is caused by a chromosomal abnormality that results in a fusion between Abl tyrosine kinase and BCR gene on chromosome 2, which results in a constitutively active tyrosine kinase. Most CMLs are treated with tyrosine kinase inhibitors...

Dr. Gregory Hoffman's group from Novartis recently used a custom library from Cellecta that identified BRM/SMARCA2 as a critical target in BRG1-deficient cancers (PMID: 24520176). The shRNA library consisted of 6500 shRNAs (380 genes with 17 shRNAs per gene) involved in epigenetic regulation. These genes represented...

Researchers at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the MD Anderson Cancer Center used Cellecta's shRNA DECIPHER Libraries for an in vivo genetic screen that identified SALL1 as a breast cancer tumor suppressor that plays a role in E-cadherin regulation (Article)E-cadherin (CDH1) has been shown to have a...

Researchers at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) used Cellecta's shRNA DECIPHER libraries to identify genes that sensitize pancreatic cells to gemcitabine.Pancreatic cancer has only a 6% 5-year survival rate. Gemcitabine is the standard treatment in conjunction with surgery to remove cancerous...

It's been a while since the last post to this blog. It is not that nothing has been going on, in fact, quite the opposite. It has been quite busy the past several months and, unfortunately, blog postings have suffered. However, I thought I would get things started again with short post about our recent SBIR...

A couple of months ago at the CHI Discovery on Target Conference, Hakim Djaballah, Director of the HTS Core Facility at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, gave a unique and insightful presentation highlighting the challenges RNAi screening to identify lethal loss of function interaction in oncogenic...

We recently received a phase II of our SBIR grant Exploiting Synthetic Lethality of Hematopoietic Lineage Cells to Develop Novel Targets from the NIH. Rather than trying to identify potential drug targets in oncogenic hematopoietic cells, much of the effort for this project focuses on trying to develop a...

Therapeutic approaches using multiple drug combinations have become a standard treatment model for many types of cancer. Due to the tremendous genetic complexity and adaptive nature of most human malignancies, the use of multiple drugs acting on different targets increases the efficacy and helps thwart the...

Cellecta attended the AACR-NCI Systems Biology : Confronting the Complexity of Cancer Conference in San Diego last week and presented two posters:...

Cellecta's recent agreement with the Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) provides support to laboratories in their institution doing genome-wide RNAi...