At St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, John Nitiss is trying to figure out just how certain cancer drugs — those that target topoisomerases — work. In doing so, he is hoping to specifically discover where they interact on the enzyme and what exactly is going on in a cancer cell once the drug begins to act on the enzyme.

While Nitiss previously conducted this drug action research in yeast, he is now turning his attention to mammalian cells with the help of RNA interference.