Welcome to the
Our lab devises methods to selectively kill cancer cells by better understanding apoptotic cell death
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Our Bulletin Board
Cancer research takes momentum – to bring therapies from bench to bedside, and back. Momentum to move science forward. And momentum to transform cancers into treatable conditions.
— Dana-Farber (@DanaFarber) February 1, 2023
Season two of Unraveled is now available wherever you get your podcasts.@DrMDavids@DrTonyLetai pic.twitter.com/LT9FJMpdEK
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Salma Parvinhas just published a great paper on CLL https://shorturl.at/knqK0. Identifiable subsets of CLL (incl IgHV unmutated) are less primed for apoptosis, less mature, and - importantly!- sensitive to FLT3 inhibition! Please check it out.
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We had an amazing time this past weekend at Tony's house to celebrate Christmas with a holiday mystery. We hope you all have happy holidays!!!!
This past week we had our first annual lab retreat hosted by Tony Letai in the beautiful mountains of New Hampshire. |
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Everyone should check out this article by the Tyner Lab, a commentary on functional precision medicine. You can access the paper by pressing the hyperlink here: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1fYRY5TA51ZmeL.
Hi Everyone, please support Dr. Matthew Davids and his work following the information here in this tweet, and check out the video linked below:
Thank you @LisaWBZ for highlighting my @PanMass story and our research in CLL @DanaFarber. To support my ride please go to https://t.co/etnzcET41l https://t.co/ZE1qAYadLq
— Matthew Davids, MD, MMSc (@DrMDavids) August 4, 2022
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Dana Farber doctor, uncle in cancer remission to ride PMC together
Dr. Matt Davids worked on a leukemia treatment that saved his uncle's life. WBZ-TV's Lisa Hughes reports. |
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Congratulations to Dr. Rongqing (Aaron) Pan for his most recent publication in Cell, titled Augmenting NK cell-based immunotherapy by targeting mitochondrial apoptosis
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Dana-Farber’s Momentum of Discovery – Featuring Drs. Anthony G. Letai and Jacqueline S. Garcia. Enjoy ! |
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We said goodbye to some beloved members of the lab this Friday, Emmalyn, Eliza, and Ruochen." Congratulations Guys! We wish you well in your future endeavors." |
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To celebrate the winter days, we got together for ice skating and warm holiday treats.
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Huge Congratulations to Danielle Potter, PhD for her paper in Nature's Cell Death & Disease, titled Dynamic BH3 profiling identifies active BH3 mimetic combinations in non-small cell lung cancer. You can access the article by clicking the title in blue.
Temperatures are soaring in June allowing for our lab's annual summer party hosted by Tony Letai! It also serves as the official induction for people into a coveted society where we unravel the mysteries of the mitochondria ;)
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Jeremy Ryan is co-first author in this neat paper titled Mitochondrial apoptotic priming is a key determinant of cell fate upon p53 restoration published in PNAS. This work was done in collaboration with Tyler Jacks' lab at MIT. You can read the article here
Congratulations Jeremy! |
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Big congratulations to our lab alum Veerle Daniels for her paper in Science Signaling, titled Metabolic perturbations sensitize triple-negative breast cancers to apoptosis induced by BH3 mimetics. Please click here to access the paper and see some more Letai Lab members in the author section!
Alongside the paper, her work is also featured on the EurekAlert news release here! |
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a novel targeted drug to treat acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) in older patients, a segment of the blood cancer population in dire need of improved therapies.
In a phase 3 clinical trial, researchers showed that the oral drug, venetoclax (or Venclexta), when given along with azacitidine, could extend survival in newly diagnosed patients with AML who were 75 years or older or had other medical conditions that made them poor candidates for intensive chemotherapy.
Read about the findings and comments from Dr Anthony Letai HERE!
In a phase 3 clinical trial, researchers showed that the oral drug, venetoclax (or Venclexta), when given along with azacitidine, could extend survival in newly diagnosed patients with AML who were 75 years or older or had other medical conditions that made them poor candidates for intensive chemotherapy.
Read about the findings and comments from Dr Anthony Letai HERE!
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Feb 2021: We hosted a multi-lab Journal club to discuss papers that examine the relationship between venetoclax, resistance and different metabolic outcomes. Big thank you to Letai Lab alums Dr Triona Ni-Chonghaile (currently at Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland) and Dr Joan Montero (currently at Institute for Bioengineering at Catalonia) and their labs for participating in this cross-Atlantic undertaking!
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The Society for Functional Precision Medicine has officially launched its membership platform to give members control over their membership payments, network with the functional precision community and stay updated with our monthly seminars, among other benefits. Please visit our website www.sfpm.io/ to learn more and join us!
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Holiday greetings from the Letai family! It's been a whirlwind year and we hope you all get to spend time, in-person or virtually, with family, friends and/or fluffy buddies :) |
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In ASH Clinical News, Jacqueline Garcia, MD, discusses results from a phase Ib study evaluating venetoclax and azacitidine in patients with treatment-naïve high-risk myelodysplastic syndromes. |
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A big congratulations to first author Shruti Bhatt for her Cancer Cell paper "Reduced mitochondrial apoptotic priming drives resistance to BH3 mimetics in acute myeloid leukemia"! You can read the paper (and see many familiar Letai lab authors!) here
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Dr Anthony Letai sits down with Dr Vinay Prasad for a an episode of Plenary Session where Dr Letai speaks about precision oncology, the Match trial and NGS in cancer. Be sure to check it out!
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Congratulations to Kelley McQueeney for being awarded the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) for Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship (F32) from the National Institutes of Health!
You can learn more about her grant here. She will be conducting research on “Identifying combination therapies in ovarian tumors using high throughput dynamic BH3 profiling”. |
The Letai Lab family wishes everyone a safe and healthy summer! It's been a bumpy start but we have some occasions to be grateful for and celebrate - lab members moving on to grad school, medical school and our wonderful Jeremy Ryan's birthday!
The Society for Functional Precision Medicine is holding its Monthly Seminar Series starting on July 8th at 11am EST. Anthony Letai, MD, PhD is the president of the society which aims to match cancer patients to the therapies best for them using functional assays wherein patient tumor cells are directly treated with drugs and their outcomes measured before clinical application of the therapy to the individual. You can read more about the society and register for the seminar series here.
Congrats to Jacqueline Garcia MD who is first author in a paper titled "Increased Mitochondrial Apoptotic Priming With Targeted Therapy Predicts Clinical Response to Re-Induction Chemotherapy" in the American Journal of Hematology. You can read more about it here!
Be sure to check out this article in CAP Today where Anthony Letai, PhD gives an overview of how BH3 profiling can be used to predict response to therapy. Excerpt from article:
“There is an enormous amount of actionable information that can be obtained from taking the actual cancer cell you’re interested in and subjecting it to a relevant perturbation, that is, exposing it to the actual drugs,” he said. “We nearly completely overlook this in today’s precision medicine approaches, and I think there is enormous unrealized potential in this general approach.”
Uniting these efforts worldwide is what led him and colleagues to form the Society for Functional Precision Medicine, which you can learn more about here!
“There is an enormous amount of actionable information that can be obtained from taking the actual cancer cell you’re interested in and subjecting it to a relevant perturbation, that is, exposing it to the actual drugs,” he said. “We nearly completely overlook this in today’s precision medicine approaches, and I think there is enormous unrealized potential in this general approach.”
Uniting these efforts worldwide is what led him and colleagues to form the Society for Functional Precision Medicine, which you can learn more about here!
Patrick Bhola is first author of a newly published paper High-throughput dynamic BH3 profiling may quickly and accurately predict effective therapies in solid tumors in Science Signalling! You can read the paper and (see familiar Letai lab members in the authors!) here
Also, be sure to read up on the Dana Farber Cancer Institute press release here. Excerpt from press release:
“Cancer cells that are cultured for extended periods of time can undergo a variety of changes and may not be representative of the tumor cells that are actually in a mouse or human,” says study first author Patrick Bhola, PhD, of Dana-Farber. “The challenge has been to create a drug-screening technique that shrinks the gap between tumor cells in the body and the cells we do the screening on. The technique we’ve developed helps to accomplish that.”
Also, be sure to read up on the Dana Farber Cancer Institute press release here. Excerpt from press release:
“Cancer cells that are cultured for extended periods of time can undergo a variety of changes and may not be representative of the tumor cells that are actually in a mouse or human,” says study first author Patrick Bhola, PhD, of Dana-Farber. “The challenge has been to create a drug-screening technique that shrinks the gap between tumor cells in the body and the cells we do the screening on. The technique we’ve developed helps to accomplish that.”
Congratulations to Jacqueline Garcia MD, our AML clinical collaborator, for getting her K08 funded!
You can read more about Dr Garcia's work here and watch her talk about treating acute leukemias in adults here!
You can read more about Dr Garcia's work here and watch her talk about treating acute leukemias in adults here!
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The Society for Functional Precision Medicine is holding a Virtual Meeting on Friday, April 24th 11AM-12:30PM EST. Dr Anthony Letai serves as President of the organization which is founded to improve patient care and outcomes by facilitating implementation of functional assays into clinical care. Read more about the organization's missions here and sign up for the Virtual Meeting here!
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A big congratulations to Alexandra Pourzia on a successful thesis defense entitled, “Context-dependent requirements for mitochondrial apoptosis in CAR T killing of cancer cells.” She will now transition back to medical school to complete her MD as part of her MD/PhD path and we wish her all the very best for her journey!
Congratulations to Anthony Letai and the Letai lab for his recognition as a Highly Cited Researcher for 2019! In 2019, about 0.1% of the world's researchers across 21 research fields have received this distinction.
Congrats to Shruti Bhatt for being selected to receive an ASH Abstract Achievement Award for her abstract titled Individualized Mitochondrial Functional Approach to Combination of BCL-2 and MCL-1 Antagonism in Acute Myeloid Leukemia
Congrats to Letai Lab members Jeremy Ryan and Thelma Mashaka, and lab alumni Mariana Villalobos- Ortiz on their publication in Cell Death & Differentiation!
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Congrats to Kelley McQueeney for being selected for a scholarship to attend the 27th Euroconference on Apoptosis in Dresden, Germany 2019 by the ECDO scientific committee!
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Congrats to Alexandra Pourzia (MD, PhD Graduate Student) for being one of the winners of the annual Grunebaum Poster Competition at this year's Landry Cancer Biology Consortium Spring Symposium!
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Join Dr. Letai and the Society for Functional Precision Medicine at the Functional Precision Medicine Summit on Saturday March 30, 2019 in Atlanta! Read more about the meeting here.
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Congratulations to Veerle Daniels, PhD, who is a 2019 Grant recipient from the Terri Brodeur Breast Cancer Foundation! Read more about her work here.
Congratulations to Elizabeth Stover, MD, PhD for receiving the 2019 Liz Tilberis Early Career Award for her project "Targeting Anti-apoptotic Proteins BCL-XL and MCL-1 in Serous Ovarian Cancer."
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Please read about Dr. Letai's latest publication in Blood about "Venetoclax combined with decitabine or azacitidine in treatment-naive, elderly patients with acute myeloid leukemia" here.
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Happy to announce that the Letai lab helped drive the FDA approval of venetoclax combination for adult AML patients. Read more about the approval here. |
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Dr. Letai is a co-organizer for the 13th Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Meeting on August 13-17! Please see the details for this meeting here.
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Watch Matt Davids interview at the WEEI NESN Jimmy Fund Radio-Telethon here! Be sure to visit the Davids Lab website for more information on his research.
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Check out Jeremy Ryan's on-demand webinar here highlighting how the Intellicyt® iQue Screener Plus facilitated rapid BH3 profiling using minimal sample, thus saving precious primary tumor samples.
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Congratulations to Matt Davids, MD, MMSc, for winning the First James O. Armitage Lymphoma Clinical Investigator Award!
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Check out Dr. Letai 's interview titled "Are We Asking Too Much of Genomics in Cancer Research?" on Mendelspod.com!
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If you wish to learn more or become a member of the Society for Functional Precision Medicine, please visit their website www.sfpm.io!
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Read about Dr. Anthony Letai's latest review published in Nature Medicine HERE!
Read about how developmental regulation of mitochondrial apoptosis by c-Myc governs age- and tissue- specific sensitivity to cancer therapeutics in Kris Sarosiek's new Cancer Cell paper HERE.
Jennifer Guerriero and Team Macrophage recently published an innovative paper on Class IIa HDAC inhibition in Nature. Read HERE.
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Congratulations to Matt Davids for winning the ASCI Young Physician-Scientist Award! Read more about his achievement on the Brigham and Women's Hospital website or visit the David's Lab website for more information on his research.
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The Letai Lab was featured in Paths of Progress. Read about us here!
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We are very excited about the recent FDA approval of Venetoclax, a game changing Leukemia drug.
For more information, read about it HERE.
For more information, read about it HERE.
Congratulations to Joan Montero on winning the Eighth National Cancer Research Award "Maria Julia Castillo" !!
Visit his page for more information on his research.
Visit his page for more information on his research.
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