New Discoveries and Honors in Cancer Research

Lydia Finley, PhD (Damon Runyon Jack Sorrell Fellow ‘13-‘17) of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and colleagues, demonstrated that stem cells can rewire their metabolism to enhance a mechanism that helps them avoid committing to a specific fate; in turn, this improves stem cells’ ability to renew themselves. She showed that the nutrients a stem cell uses, and how it uses them, can contribute to a cell’s fate by influencing gene expression through epigenetic modifications. This newly established link between metabolism and stem cell fate improves our understanding of development and regeneration, and, of cancer. These results were published in the journal Nature.