c-Myc and cancer: an alternative to personalized medicine?

Professor Gerard Evan gave us his view on why targeting the engines of cancer could prove more effective than personalized medicine.

Professor Evan’s seminal contributions include the discovery of Myc’s involvement in apoptosis and the development of early tools to study Myc such as the 9E10 antibody to the Myc tag.

He talked to us about tackling cancer using an alternative approach to personalized medicine:

"The commonalities of cancer is the great missing clue that people are sidestepping...

"…[We need to]  come up with therapies that don't matter who you are or what you've got. Now, a lot of people think that's science fiction, but I think the data are all there suggesting clearly that it's not.

"...it's the big mystery in cancer biology and nobody knows why that is. Nobody knows why tumours are vulnerable to interruption of those signals, and die."

Professor Evan went on to talk about T cell-exclusion, the role of oncogenesis like Myc and Ras, his lab's current current research focus and much more.

Listen to the full interview.


References

  • Evan, G. I. et al. (1985). Isolation of monoclonal antibodies specific for human c-myc proto-oncogene product. Molecular and Cellular Biology 5, 3610–3616
  • Evan, G. I. et al. (1992). Induction of apoptosis in fibroblasts by c-myc protein. Cell 69, 119–128
  • Sodir, N.M. et al. (2011). Endogenous Myc maintains the tumor micro-environment. Genes Dev 25, 907–916
  • Annibali, D. et al. (2014). Myc inhibition is effective against glioma and reveals a role for Myc in proficient mitosis. Nature communications 5, 4632
  • Kress, T.R. et al. (2016). Identification of MYC-dependent transcriptional programs in oncogene-addicted liver tumors. Cancer Res 76, 3463–3472