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In the late 1980s, scientists developed a revolutionary approach to treating acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a type of blood cancer. Called differentiation therapy, it amounted to a bona fide cure for many patients. The treatment works by triggering cells “stuck” with a cancerous identity to keep developing and maturing, giving rise to different, non-disease causing types.

Unfortunately, this treatment only works for a small subset of patients who have a particular subtype of the disease, called promyelocytic AML (APL). “For a long time, it was seen as kind of a one-off,” says M. Andrés Blanco, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.

Now, Blanco and colleagues have identified a new approach to triggering differentiation in AML—one with potential to treat a much wider array of AML patients.

Their study, published in the journal Cancer Discovery, identifies an enzyme that regulates the process by which AML cells differentiate. In both cell lines and an animal model, the researchers found that inhibiting this enzyme, particularly in combination with other anti-cancer therapies, prompted AML cells to lose aspects of their identity associated with aggressive growth. The cells also began to exit the cell cycle, on the path toward maturing into a new cell type.

Read more about Andres’ research in the full post from Penn Today

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has selected Penn Medicine as one of 25 award recipients across 30 sites in the United States to serve as Impact of Genomic Variation on Function (IGVF) investigators, with the goal of better understanding how genetic differences impact how human genes function, and how these variations influence human health and disease. Funded by the NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), Penn Medicine will be awarded more than $1.2 million per year, with a contract that is expected to be supported for five years, totaling more than $6 million in funding for this research.

While genome sequences among people are more than 99.9 percent identical, it’s the 0.1 percent of differences, alternate orders of the As, Cs, Gs and Ts that make up DNA, combined with environment and lifestyle, that shape a person’s overall physical features and disease risk. Researchers have identified millions of human genomic variants that differ across the world, including thousands associated with disease. With results from this new research and advanced computer modeling, Penn and other IGVF consortium investigators aim to identify which variants in the genome are relevant for health and disease, with major implications for physicians and their patients.

“A fundamental question in biology is to understand how genetic variation affects genome function to influence human health and diseases,” said Hao Wu, PhD, an assistant professor of Genetics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, who will serve as the Penn site’s principal investigator. “With the IGVF award, we can leverage the brain power of Penn’s experts in human genetics, single cell sequencing and functional genomics to decode how genetic variants may contribute to how genes are regulated, how cells function, and ultimately, human diseases. This is a terrific opportunity for collaboration with researchers across departments and institutions.”

Read more about Penn’s IGVF award in Penn Medicine News.