Treatment of mice with isoniazid, which can produce vitamin B6 deficiency as a result of sequestration of PLP, in combination with venetoclax reduces proliferation in AML model mice.
January 2020 – Publication
Congratulations to Lowe Lab alum Chi Chao Chen and the team from the Lowe and Zhang Labs on their recent publication in Cancer Cell, “Vitamin B6 Addiction in Acute Myeloid Leukemia”. Focused Crispr/Cas9 screening of metabolic genes enriched in leukemia identified Pdxk, an enzyme that produces pyridoxal phosphate (PDL) from Vitamin B6, as an acute myeloid leukemia (AML) dependency.
2019 News
December 2019 – Lowe Lab Holiday Party
The lab celebrated the end of the year and the holidays at the annual Lowe lab holiday party. This year, Josef was white elephant gift doling Santa.
November 2019 – Thesis Defense
Congratulations to Evangelia Louizou for her successful defense of her thesis, in vivo Modeling of Myeloid Hematological Malignancies with Complex Karyotypes!
September 2019 – Meeting: Biology of Cancer - Microenvironment & Metastasis
Scott returned to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to co-organize the meeting on “Biology of Cancer: Microenvironment and Metastasis”. Lab postdocs Marcus Ruscetti and Direna Alonso Curbelo each gave short talks!
Above: Whole-abdomen, rather than whole body, irradiation permits the specific study of escalating radiation doses to the small intestine while minimizing effects on healthy bone marrow.
Above: p53 restoration restores alpha-ketoglutarate dependent features of pre-malignant differentiation in mouse pancreatic cancer in vivo.
September 2019 – Publication
Congratulations to Morris et al on their publication in Nature: “α-Ketoglutarate links p53 to cell fate during tumor suppression!” This paper established a novel tumor suppressive arm of p53 activity driven by metabolic dependent changes in gene expression that antagonizes malignant progression.
August 2019 – Meeting: The Salk Mechanisms and Models of Cancer
Former and current lab members came together to attend and present at the Salk Mechanisms and Models Meeting in La Jolla, California. Scott Lowe was a featured speaking, giving a talk entitled “Restoring Tumor Suppression in Advanced Cancers.” Lab alums Lukas Dow and Amaia Lujambio also presented their work, “Lineage Reversion Underlies Acquired Resistance to WNT Inhibition in Colorectal Cancer” and “ß-catenin Activation Promotes Immune Escape and Resistance to Anti-PD1 Therapy in Hepatocellular Carcinoma” respectively.
Above: Mutant p53 confers greater self renewal & capacity in hematopoietic stem cells in vivo than loss of p53, demonstrating a novel gain of function effect on differentiation not unleashed by loss of wt p53 function alone.
The Lowe Lab team, the “Loweriders” turned out for their annual ride in support of cancer research at MSKCC. The team raised over $9,000, all while having fun in the process.
March 2019 – Meeting: Nature Conference - The Tumour Cell: Plasticity, Progression and Therapy
A wonderful opportunity presented to the lab to present their works and share ideas. One of our postdoctoral researchers, Marcus Ruscetti, gave a talk entitled “Senescence induction triggers vascular emodeling and new therapeutic vulnerabilities in pancreas cancer.” Former lab member, Ross Dickens also attended the conference and gave a talk titled “Monolineage origin of relapse following multilineage differentiation therapy of acute myeloid leukemia.”
March 2019 – Staff Note
We would like to welcome our new lab manager, Anne Trumble-Koncelik to the lab.
February 2019 – Meeting: 20th International AEK Cancer Congress
Lowe Lab members old and new met at the AEK Cancer Congress in Heidelberg , Germany. Some of our lab alum in attendance included Lars Zender, Amaia Lujambio, Michael Hemann, and Johannes Zuber.
January 2019 - Staff Note
We are pleased to welcome a new postdoctoral researcher to the lab, Jose Reyes. Jose returns to the Lowe Lab after performing summer research in 2010, while the lab was still located at Cold Spring Harbor. He completed his PhD work at Harvard University focusing on DNA damage and the resulting transition of human cells from a reversible to an irreversible form of arrest.
2018 News
December 2018 – Lowe Lab Holiday Party
The lab got together for food and fun at Scott and Shane’s apartment. Direna was elected to be Santa this year!
December 2018 – Publication
NK cells (red) attach to and kill senescent lung tumor cells (green) following combination drug treatment with the MEK inhibitor trametinib and CDK4/6 inhibitor palbociclib. This study establishes senescence induction as a beneficial outcome of targeted therapy, and explains how drugs that don’t kill tumor cells can still shrink tumors by activating a unique form of NK cell immune surveillance in lung cancer.
Congratulations to Ruscetti et al on their publication “NK cell–mediated cytotoxicity contributes to tumor control by a cytostatic drug combination” in Science. This exciting new paper outlines the combination of two clinically approved cancer drugs in the treatment of Kras lung tumors in mice via the natural killer cell recruitment.
December 2018 – Thesis Defense
Congratulations to Edward (Ted) Kastenhuber on successfully defending his thesis! Ted’s thesis title was “Functional Interrogation of Genetically Simple and Complex Cancers.
October 2018 – Lab Retreat
The lab heads to Upstate New York for the annual Lowe Lab retreat. Lab members share new ideas in the chalk talk style presentations, receive awards, and have an opportunity to bond outside of the lab. This year the lab even played a friendly game of touch football.
September 2018 – Thesis Defense
Congratulations to Chi-Chao Chen on the successful defense of his thesis. His title was Identifying Therapeutic Targets for Acute Myeloid Leukemia.
April 2018 – Honors and Awards
Congratulation to Scott W. Lowe, PhD on his award from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), recognizing his outstanding accomplishments in basic cancer research.
