Fantastic to see research from CRT students being published and having an impact in their field.
Emily Tinsley is doing her PhD at RCSI and works on KMT2C and KMT2D which are related genes involved in histone modification and the activation of gene expression and are frequently mutated in breast cancer. Emily uses multi-omic data from a variety of publicly available resources to elucidate the roles of these gene mutations in breast cancer development. Emily identified a unique dependency of ER+ breast cancer cell lines on KMT2D that is potentially therapeutically exploitable and concluded that although both wildtype genes carry out similar functions they have contrasting and subtype-specific roles in breast cancer.
This work suggests that targeting KTM2D, in subtypes of breast cancer which depend on KTM2D for their growth, may lead to new therapies and offer a personalized approach for women with specific types of breast cancer.