NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The Margaret Q. Landenberger Research Foundation has given a researcher at Scripps Research Institute in Florida $150,000 to fund studies of the molecular and genetic networks that can lead to cancer, Scripps said today.
The foundation has granted the money to Michael Conkright, assistant professor in the Department of Cancer Biology at Scripps, to fund research into oncogenes that are caused by chromosome translocation.
"We've discovered an entirely new complement of transcription factors that interacts with one of these oncogenes that is not present prior to the chromosomal translocation," Conkright said in a statement. “By studying the complement of gene regulators together with data on protein expression, we may be able to finally understand mechanistically how oncogenes aberrantly activate genes.”