“Cancer drivers and Dependencies”. Scott Lowe

The path of cancer evolution dictates the tumor response to therapy and creates unique vulnerabilities that represent therapeutic opportunities. Based on this concept, Lowe’s Lab is developing powerful methods to follow the behavior of tumor-initiating cells in normal tissues in living mice. Moreover, using inducible RNA interference systems, they suppressed the function of different genes in vivo in a stable and reversible manner in order to characterize cancer drivers and the dependencies they create. Fascinating results were shown on the reversibility of gastrointestinal malignancies phenotypes turning on and off the function of specific factors.