Beth Knight, a graduate student in Mohanish Deshmukh’s lab, has found a novel gene that could be targeted for medulloblastoma. Beth’s research identified the ASC gene to be essential for medulloblastoma in mouse models. This finding was unexpected because ASC is typically associated with the detection of pathogens. However, Beth found that ASC is highly expressed in medulloblastoma and that deletion of ASC had a marked effect of inhibiting brain tumor growth. This research, which was published in Oncogene, was done in collaboration with the labs of Jenny Ting, Tim Gershon, and Ryan Miller in the Neuroscience Center and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at UNC.
To read more about Beth’s discovery, click here!