In 2023, Dr Jennifer Devlin of Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre was awarded a Cannon Family Travel Grant.
Dr Devlin travelled to Heidelberg in Germany to attend the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Conference: Transcription and Chromatin in August of this year.
The EMBL Transcription and Chromatin biennial conference aims to advance the transcriptional regulation research field through the sharing of current unpublished research findings, description of new technologies and lab methodologies, and formation of new collaborations through networking. The 2024 conference was large with 50 oral presentations (21 invited, 29 selected from abstract) across 7 sessions and over 200 posters from group leaders, postdoctoral researchers and PhD candidates.
The themes of the conference focused on the molecular mechanisms controlling gene expression (transcriptional regulation), chromatin and genome structure, advanced technologies to study transcription including next-generation sequencing and super-resolution microscope imaging, and how transcriptional dysregulation contributes to cancer progression and may be therapeutically targeted.
Dr Devlin attended the conference to present a poster on her research and to develop important contacts that could benefit her research into the future. Dr Devlin’s poster received valuable feedback and presented an opportunity for an international collaboration.
Of significant interest to Dr Devlin’s work were key oral presentations from Professor Ali Shilatifard (Northwestern University, US), Professor Yang Shi (Ludwig Centre for Cancer Research, Oxford, UK) and Associate Professor Cigall Kadoch (Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, US).
Dr Devlin told us, “Prof. Shilatifard’s presentation was of particular relevance to my work and to blood cancer research. For more than 25 years, his lab has studied components of the transcriptional machinery that are frequently mutated in blood cancers, particularly acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), with many of the experiments performed in his lab using the same AML cell lines that I use for my own research. He presented his opinion on what therapeutic strategies would be most effective to treat AML and how his lab is now focusing on developing and testing these agents. This has made me reflect on how I could incorporate these approaches into my own research project. He also described a new technology his lab has employed that may be applicable for my own research.
Prof. Shi’s presentation was also valuable as he described strategies to combine epigenetic inhibitors with kinase pathway signalling inhibitors to induce differentiation of leukaemia cells as a therapeutic strategy. Given my research will now focus on combining epigenetic inhibitors with transcriptional inhibitors, their approaches and findings were of great interest.
Assoc. Prof. Kadoch’s presentation was very interesting and highlighted her approach to use publicly available data (Cancer Dependency map) to identify cancer types that may be vulnerable to the disruption of the SWI/SNF chromatin modelling complex. This is an approach we have previously attempted in our lab with some success and will pursue more in the future.”
Dr Devlin plans to apply the knowledge she gained at the conference to a new project she is leading to test whether combinations of transcriptional inhibitor and epigenetic inhibitors will provide better therapeutic outcomes in aggressive acute-myeloid-leukaemia cells. Dr Devlin reported that through the provision of the Cannon Travel Grant to travel to the conference she, “gained valuable insights from Prof. Shilatifard’s presentation (increased effectiveness of ‘disruptor’ drugs over catalytic inhibitors) and Yang Shi’s presentation (combinations inducing leukaemia cell differentiation rather than leukaemia cell death) that I will apply to this project”.
Snowdome would like to thank the Cannon family for their continuing generosity to support blood cancer researchers.
A grant call for the 2024 Cannon Family Travel Grants will open on 7 October 2024.
Application information can be found on the Grants Page of our website from that date.