Hector Franco, PhD (Assistant Professor, Genetics) was awarded a new R01 grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for his project titled “Posttranslational regulation of FOXA1 in breast cancer”.
This five-year grant will focus on understanding how inflammatory signaling affects FOXA1 function and the role of its posttranslational modifications. More specifically, the work will determine how acetylation of FOXA1 affects binding site selection and its ability to act as a pioneer factor for others such as ERa. The driving hypothesis is that estrogen- and TNFa-directed acetylation of FOXA1 dictates binding site selection, driving ERa to non-cannonical enhancers across the genome, leading to expression programs that underlie the tumorigenesis of breast cancer.