It’s hard to have an understated response to seeing our products used in the field when the papers coming out of the work are as extraordinary as this new study from Rick Young at the Whitehead Institute and his collaborators from Harvard.
In the publication (CDK7 Inhibition Suppresses Super-Enhancer-Linked Oncogenic Transcription in MYCN-Driven Cancer), lead author Edmond Chipumuro and his colleagues describe remarkable new work trying to hobble MYC activity to stop tumor growth. Previous efforts to inhibit MYC have proven unsuccessful, so this team took a new approach: they inhibited cyclindependent kinase 7 (CDK7) to disrupt MYC transcription.
In neuroblastoma cells, this method led to “downregulation of the oncoprotein with consequent massive suppression of MYCN-driven global transcriptional amplification,” according to the paper. Follow-up studies using a mouse model “translated to significant tumor regression … without the introduction of systemic toxicity,” the authors write.
We were delighted to see that Pippin Prep was used in the team’s ChIP-seq protocol to size-select libraries for 200 bp to 400 bp fragments before sequencing on an Illumina HiSeq 2000.
“These results indicate that CDK7 inhibition, by selectively targeting the mechanisms that promote global transcriptional amplification in tumor cells, may be useful therapy for cancers that are driven by MYC family oncoproteins,” the scientists conclude.